Hyperspace missile pod.

Given that Hyperspace needs a Hyperspace drive. And this requires size, a wedge and W Sails. One might consider a special Attack system. A guided Missile pod with many missiles. Consider it the MDM version of the Graser torpedo.

Take a Keyhole I or II system. Remove some of its relay links, ship to keyhole. Add a hyperspace drive, Keyhole with added AI fire control, Preprogrammed targets plus opportunity. Warshawski sails, Wedge, Lots of fire control. Crash out of hyperspace, fire the carried MDM, how many? 20-100? plus 4-12 Apollo. wait the five minutes for the hyperspace to recharge then jump back into hyperspace. Waiting for the missiles to hit if possible.

MDM have the range to hit any in system target. The HSMP is quite small and while the missiles will be detected they are Apollo controlled by the best system. The Keyhole will accelerate at 5000G and being outside the limit can jump out of harm at any time. Can also jump back in. Reuseable rearm in a safe rendezvous in space, return to continue the attack. Add a hyperspace relay with a number of autonomous Ghost Rider platforms, picking targets.

GA Oysterbay.

Once again, a (terrible, wildly impractical) solution looking for a problem.

Duckk wrote:Once again, a (terrible, wildly impractical) solution looking for a problem.

I honestly don't believe that it can be described as a solution looking for a problem. That's being far more generous than the concept warrants.

Lord Skimper wrote:Given that Hyperspace needs a Hyperspace drive. And this requires size, a wedge and W Sails. One might consider a special Attack system. A guided Missile pod with many missiles. Consider it the MDM version of the Graser torpedo.

Take a Keyhole I or II system. Remove some of its relay links, ship to keyhole. Add a hyperspace drive, Keyhole with added AI fire control, Preprogrammed targets plus opportunity. Warshawski sails, Wedge, Lots of fire control. Crash out of hyperspace, fire the carried MDM, how many? 20-100? plus 4-12 Apollo. wait the five minutes for the hyperspace to recharge then jump back into hyperspace. Waiting for the missiles to hit if possible.

MDM have the range to hit any in system target. The HSMP is quite small and while the missiles will be detected they are Apollo controlled by the best system. The Keyhole will accelerate at 5000G and being outside the limit can jump out of harm at any time. Can also jump back in. Reuseable rearm in a safe rendezvous in space, return to continue the attack. Add a hyperspace relay with a number of autonomous Ghost Rider platforms, picking targets.

GA Oysterbay.

Not sure what you are talking about. Are you talking about a missile pod that you can use in hyperspace or that you can fire in hyperspace and have it translate out and attack targets in normal space.

If it is fire in hyperspace and attack targets in normal space, I see two problems. First, how do you set up a target when you can't see normal space from hyper? More importantly though, based on the fact that the shrike is 20K tons and a courier boat is 40K, that means that each pod with a hyper generator is larger than a shrike.

If it is for the rare use for a ship in hyperspace, remember that wedges work most places in hyperspace, only in grav waves are W. sails needed. So for most of hyperspace, a W. sail missile pod is not need. When in a grav wave, since RFC has repeatedly said there will be no W. sail missiles, even if the pod can use a sail, the missiles would not be able to, so you gain no benefit from adding sales to a missile pod.

darrell wrote:
Not sure what you are talking about. Are you talking about a missile pod that you can use in hyperspace or that you can fire in hyperspace and have it translate out and attack targets in normal space.

If it is fire in hyperspace and attack targets in normal space, I see two problems. First, how do you set up a target when you can't see normal space from hyper? More importantly though, based on the fact that the shrike is 20K tons and a courier boat is 40K, that means that each pod with a hyper generator is larger than a shrike.

If it is for the rare use for a ship in hyperspace, remember that wedges work most places in hyperspace, only in grav waves are W. sails needed. So for most of hyperspace, a W. sail missile pod is not need. When in a grav wave, since RFC has repeatedly said there will be no W. sail missiles, even if the pod can use a sail, the missiles would not be able to, so you gain no benefit from adding sales to a missile pod.

He seems to be talking about the later. An unmanned thing that could drop from hyper into n-space and fire long ranged missiles into a system.

I agree with the downsides you identified. Though a will note that if somebody did want to waste the resources on this monstrosity that there are systems the lie within a grav wave. Anything wanting to reach those system through hyper does need a W-sail, even though the missiles that platform might launch once it drop from the wave into n-space do not.

Jonathan_S wrote:

darrell wrote:
Not sure what you are talking about. Are you talking about a missile pod that you can use in hyperspace or that you can fire in hyperspace and have it translate out and attack targets in normal space.

If it is fire in hyperspace and attack targets in normal space, I see two problems. First, how do you set up a target when you can't see normal space from hyper? More importantly though, based on the fact that the shrike is 20K tons and a courier boat is 40K, that means that each pod with a hyper generator is larger than a shrike.

If it is for the rare use for a ship in hyperspace, remember that wedges work most places in hyperspace, only in grav waves are W. sails needed. So for most of hyperspace, a W. sail missile pod is not need. When in a grav wave, since RFC has repeatedly said there will be no W. sail missiles, even if the pod can use a sail, the missiles would not be able to, so you gain no benefit from adding sales to a missile pod.

He seems to be talking about the later. An unmanned thing that could drop from hyper into n-space and fire long ranged missiles into a system.

I agree with the downsides you identified. Though a will note that if somebody did want to waste the resources on this monstrosity that there are systems the lie within a grav wave. Anything wanting to reach those system through hyper does need a W-sail, even though the missiles that platform might launch once it drop from the wave into n-space do not.

I suppose it could be for launching an assault through a wormhole.


It's even bigger than Darrell is thinking. The hyperdrive and sails aren't the biggest component - that's the Keyhole 2 section, which, IIRC, got placed into the 100kt+ range.

On the other hand, if you're rocking Keyhole 2 capabilities, you're wasting a lot of capability going in the knife range of a wormhole assault.

Lord Skimper wrote:Take a Keyhole I or II system. Remove some of its relay links, ship to keyhole. Add a hyperspace drive, Keyhole with added AI fire control, Preprogrammed targets plus opportunity. Warshawski sails, Wedge, Lots of fire control. Crash out of hyperspace, fire the carried MDM, how many? 20-100? plus 4-12 Apollo. wait the five minutes for the hyperspace to recharge then jump back into hyperspace. Waiting for the missiles to hit if possible.

I'm amused this is totally ignoring the fact, we've already spent several pages discussing how this is even feasible, yet Skimper feels he has to create a whole thread to discuss it again.

You want to use keyhole, because it has "ots of fire control" right? Wrong, once you've packed a Keyhole with the sails, hyper generator (cause, you know, sails alone don't let a ship go into/out of hyper), the upsized fusion core & bunkerage to keep the thing powered up, oh and the computers that are being run by an AI that David's stated bluntly cannot be used. And since this horrid idea is also supposed to be a missile "pod", you also need to load it up with missiles too, which take up mass themselves. If we're assuming cruiser DDM's like the M16-G's, we're only looking at around 80ish tons per missile, if we're looking at full-up capital MDM's then 150+ tons per missile. Know what you've got for fire control, the answer is zero... you had to remove ALL your links to squeeze everything else in.

As we discussed on the thread, this should have been in, the MINIMUM sizes for sails, hyper generator and a wedge is somewhere between 10 and 15 k-tons, which is the size of a dispatch boat. Even if you somehow get around the ban on AI's, and somehow kept fire control links, whats going to field these pods?

Superdreadnoughts aren't even big enough to keep 100-150 k-ton "missile pods" that can be deployed through hyper in useful. Hell, even the notional sizes we've been guesstimating Lenny Detweiler spider-drive SD/forts aren't big enough to consider hauling hyper missile pods around.

Since ships are "too small" for hyper missile pods, they must be planetary launched, which means now your missile pod has to accelerate out to the hyperlimit before it can go into hyper, and you can't shoot at targets coming TO your system through hyper because sensors don't work like that. So you STILL can't use these pods, even in any remotely imaginable situation, even if they were theoretically possible, given the technical oddities in Honorverse.

Somtaaw wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:Take a Keyhole I or II system. Remove some of its relay links, ship to keyhole. Add a hyperspace drive, Keyhole with added AI fire control, Preprogrammed targets plus opportunity. Warshawski sails, Wedge, Lots of fire control. Crash out of hyperspace, fire the carried MDM, how many? 20-100? plus 4-12 Apollo. wait the five minutes for the hyperspace to recharge then jump back into hyperspace. Waiting for the missiles to hit if possible.

I'm amused this is totally ignoring the fact, we've already spent several pages discussing how this is even feasible, yet Skimper feels he has to create a whole thread to discuss it again.

You want to use keyhole, because it has "ots of fire control" right? Wrong, once you've packed a Keyhole with the sails, hyper generator (cause, you know, sails alone don't let a ship go into/out of hyper), the upsized fusion core & bunkerage to keep the thing powered up, oh and the computers that are being run by an AI that David's stated bluntly cannot be used. And since this horrid idea is also supposed to be a missile "pod", you also need to load it up with missiles too, which take up mass themselves. If we're assuming cruiser DDM's like the M16-G's, we're only looking at around 80ish tons per missile, if we're looking at full-up capital MDM's then 150+ tons per missile. Know what you've got for fire control, the answer is zero... you had to remove ALL your links to squeeze everything else in.

As we discussed on the thread, this should have been in, the MINIMUM sizes for sails, hyper generator and a wedge is somewhere between 10 and 15 k-tons, which is the size of a dispatch boat. Even if you somehow get around the ban on AI's, and somehow kept fire control links, whats going to field these pods?

Superdreadnoughts aren't even big enough to keep 100-150 k-ton "missile pods" that can be deployed through hyper in useful. Hell, even the notional sizes we've been guesstimating Lenny Detweiler spider-drive SD/forts aren't big enough to consider hauling hyper missile pods around.

Since ships are "too small" for hyper missile pods, they must be planetary launched, which means now your missile pod has to accelerate out to the hyperlimit before it can go into hyper, and you can't shoot at targets coming TO your system through hyper because sensors don't work like that. So you STILL can't use these pods, even in any remotely imaginable situation, even if they were theoretically possible, given the technical oddities in Honorverse.

Not to mention that a dispatch boat's size is in the 30-50 kiloton range, not 10-15 kilotons.

Vince wrote:Not to mention that a dispatch boat's size is in the 30-50 kiloton range, not 10-15 kilotons.

Yeah, I'd editted and forgot I'd changed that section. It's 10-15 kilotons just for the hyper generator, sails, etc out of the total 30-50 kilotons of a DB. Because the early LACs were around 20-30 and didn't have hyper capability, and DB's are among the smallest ships that do. Ergo, the differential has to be the loose tonnage you require to successfully enter/exit hyper and navigate in waves by using the sails, give or take a few kilotons.

Keyhole II is in the 150-180Kton range, about the size of a Roland. It already has a wedge, it has control links for 200 missiles. It doesn't need that many. It has oodles of SD PD. Carrying 6 to 12 Apollo pods. 48+6 / 96+12 missiles. Most of a Keyhole size outside of basic systems are these control links. Be it half or a quarter of these links, the other half to 3/4 being devoted to Sails, and HDrives. 70-120M Km ranged Missiles popping out of Hyperspace and attacking. Previous drops will include Ghost rider platforms, which will help with targeting. Say a dozen, but then ghost rider is tiny small. Carried in by Freighter or some such thing.

Such H M Pods are carried by the half dozen in a Fast freighter. Parked 6 light months out and launched in groups of 48 or so. 2,300-4,600 missiles. Per sneak attack. The Ghost rider platforms with targeting info are picked up as the missiles stream in. Fly out as any missiles streak out to intercept these attackers flying away at 5000G acceleration plus whatever speed they crashed out of hyper with. They missiles hit or not and the 48 HMP's hyper out to rendezvous with the fast freighters. Maybe they make many strikes maybe they just hit once and run.