Silesian Centaur BLAC

Somtaaw wrote:So every merchy that's arriving has local LAC forces that know their estimated schedules, and could already be in space in the rough sphere to escort them in and out of the hyper limit. Which means the only time you need LACs to truly guard you, is either a bunch of pirates actually ganged up and tagged you in hyper (the Wayfarer sim where there were no less than 8 heavy cruisers and 2 "missile freighters") where a mere 2 or 3 squadrons isn't going to achieve much, or it's the commerce raid policy of the Mandarins (again entire squadrons of CAs and BCs).

Weird Harold wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:So every merchy that's arriving has local LAC forces that know their estimated schedules, and could already be in space in the rough sphere to escort them in and out of the hyper limit. Which means the only time you need LACs to truly guard you, is either a bunch of pirates actually ganged up and tagged you in hyper (the Wayfarer sim where there were no less than 8 heavy cruisers and 2 "missile freighters") where a mere 2 or 3 squadrons isn't going to achieve much, or it's the commerce raid policy of the Mandarins (again entire squadrons of CAs and BCs).

Which is probably why RFC (as noted earlier in this thread) has said that the RMN and RHN weren't going to be building escort carriers and might be building "LAC-Bay-in-a box" to fit individual merchantmen with two or four LACs.

He didn't rule out smaller navies and SDFs building something like an escort carrier, just "mainstream navies" -- however he defines that term.

Somtaaw wrote:Most battlecruisers pre-Nikes were like the Reliant which as a maximum length of 713m and a maximum beam of 91m. Shrikes on the other hand are 71m long, and 20m beams. Simple math says the LACs would be forced into a sideways on docking bay, and even doing that you're not quite able to fit in 9 LACs nose to tail on the flank of the BC, even if you excluded the service bays. If you figure the service bays add a total of ~14m for an even 85m per LAC docked, you get about 6 or 7 LACs per broadside because the hammerhead requirements interfere. When you figure as well that the Reliant has an 81m draft but the Shrikes are 20m + service bays call it 25m height per Shrike. So you can pack at most, 14 Shrikes (or Ferrets, Katana's or Cimeterres) along each broadside of a Reliant, that works out to 3x 8 LAC squadrons plus 4 backups (the original Minnie carried 12 squadrons + 4 backups). Now we don't have the exact dimensions of the Nike Class, but it's 2.5 megatons which is almost three full times the size of the Reliants.

darrell wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Most battlecruisers pre-Nikes were like the Reliant which as a maximum length of 713m and a maximum beam of 91m. Shrikes on the other hand are 71m long, and 20m beams. Simple math says the LACs would be forced into a sideways on docking bay, and even doing that you're not quite able to fit in 9 LACs nose to tail on the flank of the BC, even if you excluded the service bays. If you figure the service bays add a total of ~14m for an even 85m per LAC docked, you get about 6 or 7 LACs per broadside because the hammerhead requirements interfere. When you figure as well that the Reliant has an 81m draft but the Shrikes are 20m + service bays call it 25m height per Shrike. So you can pack at most, 14 Shrikes (or Ferrets, Katana's or Cimeterres) along each broadside of a Reliant, that works out to 3x 8 LAC squadrons plus 4 backups (the original Minnie carried 12 squadrons + 4 backups). Now we don't have the exact dimensions of the Nike Class, but it's 2.5 megatons which is almost three full times the size of the Reliants.

You can still fit them in end to end by letting the LAC go past the center of the ship and overlapping, like so:

|X| LAC |
| LAC |X|
|X| LAC |
| LAC |X|
|X| LAC |
| LAC |X|
|X| LAC |
| LAC |X|

But there is another constraint, and that is weapons volume. A standard DN has about 40%-45% of it's volume for offensive weapons, an 800 M ton BC about 30%-33%, which means that you will only be able to carry 10 LAC's. To get your two squads of LAC's you would need at least a 1.1M hull, 600K for a single squad of LAC's.

Somtaaw wrote:

darrell wrote:You can still fit them in end to end by letting the LAC go past the center of the ship and overlapping, like so:

|X| LAC |
| LAC |X|
|X| LAC |
| LAC |X|
|X| LAC |
| LAC |X|
|X| LAC |
| LAC |X|
...

You couldn't fit them that way, because like I figured, the LAC itself is a minimum 71m long, with the servicebay clamped around the nose for ammo loading and basic servicing it'll be around 85m from tip of the bay to the very stern of the LAC. A Reliant is only 81m from spine to belly, so you can only fit the LACs in like undersized Keyhole platforms.

Hammerhead|[X]LAC[X]LAC[X]LAC[X]LAC|Hammerhead

...

Somtaaw wrote:If you let it go beyond the centreline, your bays would be extending past the belly and spine, which means you're going into blocking your own ships sensors and communications.
...

Weird Harold wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:If you let it go beyond the centreline, your bays would be extending past the belly and spine, which means you're going into blocking your own ships sensors and communications.
...

What communications arrays are in the center of a ship?

LAC bays that extend through the center of a ship are as far from the sensors and arrays on the skin of the ship as it possible to put them.

Honor scooped Nimitz up, feeling the 'cat's fierce exultation as she set him on her shoulder, and stepped over the bodies of the men she'd killed into the flight deck. The controls were standard, but she set the 'cat in the copilot's seat and took two full minutes to familiarize herself with them before she slipped the pilot's headset on and flipped up the plastic shield over the belly tractor power switch. Separating from a vessel underway under impeller drive was tricky, but at least the repair ship had no sidewalls, and she lit the acceleration warning in the passenger cabin and keyed the intercom.
--snipping of irrelevant conversation--
She waited, watching the chrono tick down, then killed the tractors holding the shuttle to the repair ship's hull and drove the belly and main thruster levers clear to the stop.

They were conventional thrusters, but they were also powerful, and just over one hundred gravities of acceleration hurled the shuttle away from the ship. The small craft's artificial gravity did its best, but its inertial compensator had no impeller wedge to work with. Twenty gravities got through, and Honor grunted as a giant's fist slammed down. But the shuttle blasted straight for the perimeter of the repair ship's wedge at an acceleration of one kilometer per second squared. It was more than enough to clear the wedge before its narrowing after aspect could destroy the tiny craft, and she gasped with relief as she hurtled free and killed the belly thrusters. She burned the main thrusters for another thirty seconds, using her attitude thrusters to slew away from the repair ship at a more tolerable fifty gravities, then brought the shuttle's transmitter on-line.

Somtaaw wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
What communications arrays are in the center of a ship?

LAC bays that extend through the center of a ship are as far from the sensors and arrays on the skin of the ship as it possible to put them.

Communications and extra sensors (like fire control links) are placed on the flat top and bottom of the ship, where there isn't any armor.

So you want to put the LAC bays directly through the middle, vertically? Sort of like poking a stick through a hotdog? That sounds even worse, because you'd have to totally drop not just your sidewalls to launch any LACs, you'd have to drop your whole wedge so the vertically mounted LACs can clear from the ship.


That's why, again, I pointed out if any bastardized BC is turned into a CLAC, they have to mount the same way the ship flows. It won't be as quick as launching from a proper DN/SD CLAC, but you only have to drop sidewalls and they'd thrust clear EXACTLY like Honor did in Honor Among Enemies, with the shuttle containing Warnecke from his repair ship.