Great Gryphon, Nike, Saganami and Roland

Currently most of the Gryphon's that remain are the un-refitted ones, except some possible surviving ship. However the Gryphon refit even with its problems made the most capable non Pod carrying ship. The Nike is a very capable ship with old school light cruiser crew size. Given Manticore classifying ships based on role not on tonnage one could argue that the Nike with 300 crew is a Cruiser for all cruiser roles. Why not just call it a Cruiser. The Saganami C+, becomes the new tincan. The New Great Gryphon becomes the new Battleship, Dreadnaught, SD. A crew reduced highly automated Great Gryphon Super ship.

Gryphon refit carries 92 Mk23 tubes. It does not carry Keyhole I or II but if made from scratch, would. It has more Armour and Armour spacing than a Nike. More Grasers and Lasers, More crew and more Marines. The Kammerling tries to replace the broadsword with 1/3rd the number of marines. One might want to use the Benjamin the Great base design with current miniaturization tech. 1000+ Crew, 900 Marines replicating the Broadsword CA, Grasers only Energy mounts reduced to 24 and Apollo tubes. Add a new Keyhole II+I. Increase the CM and PD to Harrington II numbers and replace the Chase tubes with Apollo tubes. I would keep the broadside tubes at Benny numbers of 38 and Chase tubes at 7. Each Apollo tube without the controlling other missiles tech, 8-12 Mk23's, could offer something of an evolution in missile technology. Instead of being just Attack or EW missiles make the new Apollo Missiles both. With a salvo size of 90 Mk23/24 hitting strength and using FTL to each missile and being both EW and Laser-heads. Double stacked to 180 missiles. Equal to 180 Attack and 180 EW missiles. 43-45 pods worth of missiles. Bigger badder missiles. If fighting LAC one could use Apollo cluster Mk9 Viper missiles. With a traditional control for the four carried Vipers. Good for attacking and killing LAC. New Keyhole II+I is basically a Keyhole II FTL missile controller and Keyhole I optimized for defensive CM and PD direct control.

A New Great Gryphon could be the new Super Dreadnaught. Reduced crew but still huge by any other standard. Flag command deck with all that entails. Energy weapons present but reduced to 24 and capable of taking on any kind of ship Off axis fire and no one lucky hit to kill all missiles. Built on Harrington II Tonnage. Able to fire any kind of Fusion missile. It would carry a range of missiles. Mk16, Mk23/24, Apollo and Viper cluster munitions.

Viper cluster missile are used to attack large swarms of LAC or other similar ships. 90 x 4 could launch attacks of 360 viper attacks on LAC or Drones. Once the LAC close to CM range Viper carried CM could also be used. Perhaps Viper missiles should be carried by all ships.

The Roland would assume the escort frigate role.


New Line of Manty Ships: Shrike Family - LAC, Roland - Frigate. Saganami - Destroyer. Nike - Cruiser. Great Gryphon - Super Dreadnaught.

CLAC - Carrier, Possible Escort Carrier sized Agamemnon CLBC.

SD(P) - Pod Layer.

With a new Apollo Attack / EW missile one could make an Apollo 5 missile pod. 5 FTL Mk24 Attack / 5 FTL EW Missiles in one pod. A new pod layer could fire 40 pods of Apollo missiles 200/200 Atk/EW salvo's. Carried in Standard pod size.

I was wondering when we'd see the next patented Skimper design, able to do everything and anything without regards to the design rules of the Honorverse.

The E wrote:I was wondering when we'd see the next patented Skimper design, able to do everything and anything without regards to the design rules of the Honorverse.

It slices - it Dices - It'll even make your old car top look like new!!!!!

Theemile wrote:

The E wrote:I was wondering when we'd see the next patented Skimper design, able to do everything and anything without regards to the design rules of the Honorverse.

It slices - it Dices - It'll even make your old car top look like new!!!!!

This is one instance where I agree with skimper.

The gryphon at 8.3M tons has 37 tubes broadside, 9 missiles chase. Since the invictus is 5% larger, I don't see why the next SD would not be 7+% larger, or 8.9M tons.

Put 8 Mk-23 & 1 Apollo tube in each hammerhead. (9 total. can easily be done if you remove the CM tubes and instead of 5 grasers and 4 lasers go with 6 grasers.)

Put 32 Mk-23 & 4 Apollo tubes in each broadside. (36 total)

With a 20 second firing rate, off bore firing and delayed drive activation you will have the same number of missiles per minute fired as an invictus. Since you won't have the hollow core design, that gets rid of the weakness of the hollow core, and a lucky shot won't cripple your entire missile power. In addition you will have a bigger missile storage and thus a longer firing time since you won't have the parasite weight of thousands of box launchers.

darrell wrote:
This is one instance where I agree with skimper.

The gryphon at 8.3M tons has 37 tubes broadside, 9 missiles chase. Since the invictus is 5% larger, I don't see why the next SD would not be 7+% larger, or 8.9M tons.

Put 8 Mk-23 & 1 Apollo tube in each hammerhead. (9 total. can easily be done if you remove the CM tubes and instead of 5 grasers and 4 lasers go with 6 grasers.)

Put 32 Mk-23 & 4 Apollo tubes in each broadside. (36 total)

With a 20 second firing rate, off bore firing and delayed drive activation you will have the same number of missiles per minute fired as an invictus. Since you won't have the hollow core design, that gets rid of the weakness of the hollow core, and a lucky shot won't cripple your entire missile power. In addition you will have a bigger missile storage and thus a longer firing time since you won't have the parasite weight of thousands of box launchers.

It's not that there isn't some validity here. Many people have in fact mentioned it before. The real problem with a Apollo tube SD is the apollo system itself. What we have seen is the xth iteration of apollo hardware, with research running back 75 years. This is the "stable" fieldable version, for now. It is possible that in 6 months project "oragami" may find a way for the ftl receiver to fold up, and unfold during flight to receive pulses, so the entire ACM is able to shrink to a standard mk-23 chassis dimensions.then project "gluestick" finds a way to stick the ftl receiver into every missile, then project "i ran out of letters" finds a way....

If anything like this happens, a podnaught just needs to swap out pods. Manticore's podnuaghts have gone through 4 major generations of weapon systems between their design phase and now. A new Tube SD would quickly be in the same position as the last Gryphon, armed with outdated tubes and being overly costly to update. In 15-20 years, once the turmoil of new weapons has died down abd stabilized,I can see a Tube SD comeback, butnot now.

The mystique of fire control channels apply here too. If your SD is covered with missile hatches, it doesn't have as much surface area for fire control. The SD(P)s without broadside launchers can dedicate all that surface area(which is harder to find than internal volume) to other jobs - not just fire control, but anti-missile defense.

Apollo does mean a tube SD is feasible again, but Theemile's point about rapidly changing missiles causing entire vessels to become obsolete in a snap stands. There is an arms race in progress after all. HMS Dreadnought was scrapped 13 years after being launched... but HMS Ark Royal, commissioned in 1914, was still considered an useful aircraft carrier until thirty years later.

IMO, in DW's universe, the SD(P) is the equivalent to the aircraft carrier - a platform which can upgrade its "main battery" as it becomes possible. Tube SDs(all tube vessels, really) are doomed to become obsolete as soon as someone introduces a new weapons system or a better armouring scheme, or both.

Theemile wrote:

darrell wrote:
This is one instance where I agree with skimper.

The gryphon at 8.3M tons has 37 tubes broadside, 9 missiles chase. Since the invictus is 5% larger, I don't see why the next SD would not be 7+% larger, or 8.9M tons.

Put 8 Mk-23 & 1 Apollo tube in each hammerhead. (9 total. can easily be done if you remove the CM tubes and instead of 5 grasers and 4 lasers go with 6 grasers.)

Put 32 Mk-23 & 4 Apollo tubes in each broadside. (36 total)

With a 20 second firing rate, off bore firing and delayed drive activation you will have the same number of missiles per minute fired as an invictus. Since you won't have the hollow core design, that gets rid of the weakness of the hollow core, and a lucky shot won't cripple your entire missile power. In addition you will have a bigger missile storage and thus a longer firing time since you won't have the parasite weight of thousands of box launchers.

It's not that there isn't some validity here. Many people have in fact mentioned it before. The real problem with a Apollo tube SD is the apollo system itself. What we have seen is the xth iteration of apollo hardware, with research running back 75 years. This is the "stable" fieldable version, for now. It is possible that in 6 months project "oragami" may find a way for the ftl receiver to fold up, and unfold during flight to receive pulses, so the entire ACM is able to shrink to a standard mk-23 chassis dimensions.then project "gluestick" finds a way to stick the ftl receiver into every missile, then project "i ran out of letters" finds a way....

If anything like this happens, a podnaught just needs to swap out pods. Manticore's podnuaghts have gone through 4 major generations of weapon systems between their design phase and now. A new Tube SD would quickly be in the same position as the last Gryphon, armed with outdated tubes and being overly costly to update. In 15-20 years, once the turmoil of new weapons has died down abd stabilized,I can see a Tube SD comeback, butnot now.

Secondly, it is easy to replace a big missile tube with a smaller one, if nessesary. thank about it like replacing an 18" gun with a 16" gun.

First and most important, IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO REPLACE THE TUBE. somewhere in the perals there is a statement by RFC that a large tube can fire a smaller missile. I was unable to find it on a quick search, but did find the following:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/82/1
Naval refits
Note that some of the late model pre-pod ships in the RMN and the GSN are in a somewhat different category from their older consorts. Some of them were built after the probable dimensions for the MDM were already known, and they were given larger launchers, bigger magazines, and outside ammo handling equipment while still on the building ways. Those ships need no refit to handle the MDM through their broadside launchers. (Think of this as the USN's decision to design "outsized" torpedo tubes into its latest generation of attack subs so that if bigger weapons come along, they'll be able to fire them from existing platforms.)

That means that a tube built to fire an apollo control missile will fire a Mk-23 missile without modification or rebuilding.

munroburton wrote:The mystique of fire control channels apply here too. If your SD is covered with missile hatches, it doesn't have as much surface area for fire control. The SD(P)s without broadside launchers can dedicate all that surface area(which is harder to find than internal volume) to other jobs - not just fire control, but anti-missile defense.

Apollo does mean a tube SD is feasible again, but Theemile's point about rapidly changing missiles causing entire vessels to become obsolete in a snap stands. There is an arms race in progress after all. HMS Dreadnought was scrapped 13 years after being launched... but HMS Ark Royal, commissioned in 1914, was still considered an useful aircraft carrier until thirty years later.

IMO, in DW's universe, the SD(P) is the equivalent to the aircraft carrier - a platform which can upgrade its "main battery" as it becomes possible. Tube SDs(all tube vessels, really) are doomed to become obsolete as soon as someone introduces a new weapons system or a better armouring scheme, or both.

ever heard of something called keyhole 2????

SD's equiped with keyhole or keyhole 2 do not need lots of big radio antennas on the broadside to control missiles from millions of KM, that is the job of Keyhole, and one of the reasons that it is so big. All the ship needs is ONE tranciever that takes up less than 1% the former hull volume to communicate with the keyhole platform 200KM away.

munroburton wrote:The mystique of fire control channels apply here too. If your SD is covered with missile hatches, it doesn't have as much surface area for fire control. The SD(P)s without broadside launchers can dedicate all that surface area(which is harder to find than internal volume) to other jobs - not just fire control, but anti-missile defense.

Apollo does mean a tube SD is feasible again, but Theemile's point about rapidly changing missiles causing entire vessels to become obsolete in a snap stands. There is an arms race in progress after all. HMS Dreadnought was scrapped 13 years after being launched... but HMS Ark Royal, commissioned in 1914, was still considered an useful aircraft carrier until thirty years later.

IMO, in DW's universe, the SD(P) is the equivalent to the aircraft carrier - a platform which can upgrade its "main battery" as it becomes possible. Tube SDs(all tube vessels, really) are doomed to become obsolete as soon as someone introduces a new weapons system or a better armouring scheme, or both.

Actually, with regards HMS Ark Royal that is not entirely true. Yes, the 1914 Ark Royal was still in commission but only as an auxiliary; (She was renamed Pegasus & used to test catapults, I think). It was only the exigencies of the war that caused her to be pressed into service as a Fighter Catapult Ship & then she was retired from frontline service as soon as possible.

A more accurate example would be HMS Victorious, I think. She was modernised & proved a useful ship but the complexity, cost & length of the refit persuaded the Admiralty to drop plans to modernise some of her sister ships The same could also be said about HMS Eagle & HMS Ark Royal IV.

darrell wrote:ever heard of something called keyhole 2????

Yep, I believe that Skimpy mentioned it in his original post:

Lord Skimper wrote:Gryphon refit carries 92 Mk23 tubes. It does not carry Keyhole I or II but if made from scratch, would.

Although a ship built from scratch would NOT be a "Gryphon," it would be a completely new design with all of the advances made in the last century or so.