Energy torpedoes against spider drive ships?

My thought is that if you are close enough to use an energy torpedo, you should have been hammering the Spider from long range with missiles (any missiles) and then already have engaged with grasers and lasers from normal energy range. Granted, we have seen "defensive" weaponry ( laser clusters etc) used at short range against things such as Hexapuma's responce to the Maryann killing her cutter but that was not going in against a full-up warship.

Do RMN ships (younger than 50 years) even have energy torpedoes anymore?

Hey,

First off, I read David Weber books... walls of text don't exactly scare me.

Glad to see that there's been some discussion along these lines.

To the point that energy torpedoes don't have sufficient range, I'm not sure, but I think you all might be conflating the range of the grav lance with the range of the energy torpedoes. To the best of my memory, while the grav lance range was specified as 100k klicks, the range of the energy torpedoes was never established. Obviously, in On Basilisk Station, the energy torps would be useless until that range, but like lasers/grasers, they might have a longer useful range against undefended targets (I'm thinking Cerberus here where lasers were used down wedge throats or sterns at what, 1.5million klicks?).

In general, I think it makes sense that you're probably going to be opening the ball with MDMs anyway though. But as long as the MA is deploying graser torpedoes, I guess I feel like there's still room. Come on Hemphill, go for it!

Brigade XO wrote:My thought is that if you are close enough to use an energy torpedo, you should have been hammering the Spider from long range with missiles (any missiles) and then already have engaged with grasers and lasers from normal energy range. Granted, we have seen "defensive" weaponry ( laser clusters etc) used at short range against things such as Hexapuma's responce to the Maryann killing her cutter but that was not going in against a full-up warship.

Do RMN ships (younger than 50 years) even have energy torpedoes anymore?

They were still building ships with ET launchers into the mid 1900s. Earlier Reliants had two of them in each broadside, although that appear to have been deleted from the Flight III and IV builds.

Gryphons SDs had a few, although none of the Graysons' version did.

that_other_dude wrote:Hey,

First off, I read David Weber books... walls of text don't exactly scare me.

Glad to see that there's been some discussion along these lines.

To the point that energy torpedoes don't have sufficient range, I'm not sure, but I think you all might be conflating the range of the grav lance with the range of the energy torpedoes. To the best of my memory, while the grav lance range was specified as 100k klicks, the range of the energy torpedoes was never established. Obviously, in On Basilisk Station, the energy torps would be useless until that range, but like lasers/grasers, they might have a longer useful range against undefended targets (I'm thinking Cerberus here where lasers were used down wedge throats or sterns at what, 1.5million klicks?).

In general, I think it makes sense that you're probably going to be opening the ball with MDMs anyway though. But as long as the MA is deploying graser torpedoes, I guess I feel like there's still room. Come on Hemphill, go for it!

Good points. However, bear in mind that the energy torpedoes are slower than lightspeed weapons, so their targeting will be substantially less accurate than grasers, etc..

Energy weapons range is effectively limited to around 400,000km thanks to lightspeed targeting limitations. At that distance, you are seeing your target where it was one second ago.

According to OBS, usually only wallers even consider carrying energy torpedos, most ships smaller don't have the size to devote to energy torpedo arrays AND carry meaningful armaments. the Light Cruiser Fearless, was as Hemphill later admitted in AAC, "a testbed, never intended to actually see combat".


I wouldn't be surprised that even though Invictii class podnoughts are supposed to not have any broadside weapons, they actually carry energy torpedo arrays because those are computer operated and not 'manned' like conventional weapons [I think, not 100% certain].

However, as observed already, energy torps are pretty useless and graser/lasers are firing into targets considerably farther out, which would only make ET's a "last ditch" weapon. More or less exactly like how the Q-Ship came around on Fearless at Basilisk Station only to have that last millisecond "oh sh**"

Welcome to the madness... aka what we do while waiting for new and ultimately final books. Not to conflate our fictions, but just for the fun of it I was debating my teenager about "how to kill a jedi in a darkened room" because he/she will still know you are there. She had some fun / good battle answers for most of my suggested tactics except... a pattern of fragmentation grenades. AKA hard to fight when your unarmored legs are full of shrapnel.

Big trick isn't killing the spiders. It's finding them first in "the darkest room", i.e. the black immensity of space when they're working to keep your viewing angle to where they can show you what you expect to see. Once they're found, just take out their legs (the ability to run away/evade).

Meaning that yes, an energy torp will do it. For that matter so will a counter-missile wedge, graser, mine, or bomb pumped laser which arrive in an explosive pattern around said spider-drive ship, taking out it's "legs".

Nice thing about those bomb pumped lasers is that even a Roland class DD (destroyer) can pop a round of them off at the spider from more than a light minute away, vs. the torp which is a closer in "knife at a gunfight" or "lightsaber in a death star battle" by PD-192X, wrong weapon or the job.

SharkHunter wrote:Welcome to the madness... aka what we do while waiting for new and ultimately final books. Not to conflate our fictions, but just for the fun of it I was debating my teenager about "how to kill a jedi in a darkened room" because he/she will still know you are there. She had some fun / good battle answers for most of my suggested tactics except... a pattern of fragmentation grenades. AKA hard to fight when your unarmored legs are full of shrapnel.

Big trick isn't killing the spiders. It's finding them first in "the darkest room", i.e. the black immensity of space when they're working to keep your viewing angle to where they can show you what you expect to see. Once they're found, just take out their legs (the ability to run away/evade).

Meaning that yes, an energy torp will do it. For that matter so will a counter-missile wedge, graser, mine, or bomb pumped laser which arrive in an explosive pattern around said spider-drive ship, taking out it's "legs".

Nice thing about those bomb pumped lasers is that even a Roland class DD (destroyer) can pop a round of them off at the spider from more than a light minute away, vs. the torp which is a closer in "knife at a gunfight" or "lightsaber in a death star battle" by PD-192X, wrong weapon or the job.

Total agreement - the biggest problem isn't killing a spider drive ship, it is finding it.

I think the first line of attack should be missiles or drones armed with "sand", pellets in the 1 g to 1 kg size, used for area attack when an RD or LAC gets a sniff on the location of said Spider-Drive ship. I would also suggest seeding a system with many cheap small sensors capable of detecting heat. Since the spider-drive ships have to emit heat in some direction, a multitude of such sensors should help get a sniff as to general location. Then RDs and LACs can localize, and a salvo of fractional light speed missiles throwing sand can hopefully do enough damage to take out their stealth systems, at which point they're toast.

I suppose a wet navy analogy to the sand would be hedgehogs or depth charges.

BTW, a 1 kg impact at fractional light speed would yield on the order of a megaton explosion.

-- Bob G

The particle defenses of the notoriously difficult to spot RMN recon drones would casually swat that sort of junk away. Why would you expect it to work on a spider?

A drone hitting one grain of sand can keep quiet about it. a drone, or a ship, encountering 10s or 100s of thousands of 'em is going to be rather more noticeable. Basically, the suggestion is to convert that region of space from more-or-less empty to damned crowded and see what comes out of the woodwork.

Of course, it completely escapes me why one would want to go to the trouble when one is equipped with radar sets that have no trouble painting a CL in full stealth mode at 18 million km. We don't have a lot of specs on typical fire-control systems, but they should be capable of painting a ten-degree square patch of sky in 100s or so and still ping an SD sized hull at >20 million km. If you can't localise that sniff within 10 degrees or so, you're probably not going to be able to pin anything down what ever method you use.

kzt wrote:The particle defenses of the notoriously difficult to spot RMN recon drones would casually swat that sort of junk away. Why would you expect it to work on a spider?

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/116/0

And why this doesn't work on ships:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/127/0

"I'd have to run the numbers, but the particle shielding is basically designed to handle collisions with solid objects massing up to about two metric tons at velocities of up to 60% of light-speed. More massive objects can be dealt with it lower velocities, and as the velocity rises above .6c, the size of the object the system can handle goes down. There is, however, a reason warships mount massively redundant point defense to cover the bow-aspect of their wedges, and a reason besides the need to engage an enemy vessel for mounting the most powerful chase weapons possible and mounting them in multiple numbers, instead of simply settling for the biggest, nastiest spinal mount weapon you can cram in. When an object too large for the particle shielding to deal with turns up, it is automatically engaged by the ship's point defense and -- if the ship has been cleared for action -- its chase energy weapons, as well. And the fire control on those systems is designed to engage targets coming in at better than 80% of light-speed. and they're also designed to begin engaging them at ranges in excess of 200,000 kilometers. "

kzt wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/116/0

And why this doesn't work on ships:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/127/0

"I'd have to run the numbers, but the particle shielding is basically designed to handle collisions with solid objects massing up to about two metric tons at velocities of up to 60% of light-speed. More massive objects can be dealt with it lower velocities, and as the velocity rises above .6c, the size of the object the system can handle goes down. There is, however, a reason warships mount massively redundant point defense to cover the bow-aspect of their wedges, and a reason besides the need to engage an enemy vessel for mounting the most powerful chase weapons possible and mounting them in multiple numbers, instead of simply settling for the biggest, nastiest spinal mount weapon you can cram in. When an object too large for the particle shielding to deal with turns up, it is automatically engaged by the ship's point defense and -- if the ship has been cleared for action -- its chase energy weapons, as well. And the fire control on those systems is designed to engage targets coming in at better than 80% of light-speed. and they're also designed to begin engaging them at ranges in excess of 200,000 kilometers. "

I believe every instance where we've seen particle screens being up has also been when the wedge has been active.
I know it was explicitly mentioned that missile wedges incorporate radiation and particle shielding, but when MDMs are ballistic, those shields are down.
How much of that can be carried over to ship particle and radiation shields is unclear.

At any rate, my impression was that the idea was to chuck loads of crap out, and look for it interacting with particle shields. Just because the particle shields can take it doesn't mean nothing happens when there's a lot hitting the shields at once.

It is also possible that the idea is to chuck loads of crap out and look for voids where there shouldn't be any.