Knife fighting with cm's

There's a line in Ashes of Victory along the lines of cm's can't stop lasers and grasers.

But surely they can. Timing might be a touch tricky but surely it's doable.

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One of the books Call of somethings, that cover the early days of Manticore, show it's possible to stop A graser with some form of missile.

But you have to spot the missile in space, and you're using it as a form of sidewall.

However in the modern Honorverse along the time of Ashes of Victory and the like, your average ship has between 8 and 30 broadside energy weapons and between 2 and 10 chase energy weapons. That's far too many to try to use any form of missile or counter-missile wedge to intercept.

Somtaaw wrote:However in the modern Honorverse along the time of Ashes of Victory and the like, your average ship has between 8 and 30 broadside energy weapons and between 2 and 10 chase energy weapons. That's far too many to try to use any form of missile or counter-missile wedge to intercept.

Not exactly. As long as the wedge is on a direct bearing between the target and the attacker and several times the size of the target, there's a reasonably good chance that it could absorb all energy fire from the target.

The big problem is getting the timing right. Interposing a wedge only works well if that wedge can stay up indefinitely; a missile wedge, with its limited lifespan, only offers limited protection. In other words, you can buy yourself some time by using a missile or drone wedge like that, but unless you manage to somehow nullify the attacker during the time you hide, he's going to be able to react to the wedge coming down and get a salvo or two off.

But yeah. By far the biggest problem with this tactic is that it is only usable in energy-range combat, and only against the enemies direct-fire weaponry; it's completely useless against laser heads due to the multitude of vectors they can attack from.

The E wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:However in the modern Honorverse along the time of Ashes of Victory and the like, your average ship has between 8 and 30 broadside energy weapons and between 2 and 10 chase energy weapons. That's far too many to try to use any form of missile or counter-missile wedge to intercept.

Not exactly. As long as the wedge is on a direct bearing between the target and the attacker and several times the size of the target, there's a reasonably good chance that it could absorb all energy fire from the target.

The big problem is getting the timing right. Interposing a wedge only works well if that wedge can stay up indefinitely; a missile wedge, with its limited lifespan, only offers limited protection. In other words, you can buy yourself some time by using a missile or drone wedge like that, but unless you manage to somehow nullify the attacker during the time you hide, he's going to be able to react to the wedge coming down and get a salvo or two off.

But yeah. By far the biggest problem with this tactic is that it is only usable in energy-range combat, and only against the enemies direct-fire weaponry; it's completely useless against laser heads due to the multitude of vectors they can attack from.

Broadside to broadside is too large to reliably intercept all the beams because you're a long spindle and the beams are studding all the way down both lengths. And if you can spot that many missiles to reliable intercept all of the beams, you wouldn't have needed to get into beam range at all.

And that's not even counting the cycle times are no higher than 30 seconds, which is again "if you can get that many missiles into space to intercept beams, you didn't even need to make this a beam duel".

This form of defense may have higher value for a Q-ship merchy, but because it's relying on spotting missiles into space for interception, you're risking giving the raider a chance to realize whats happening and launching missiles instead of using beams too.

Somtaaw wrote:Broadside to broadside is too large to reliably intercept all the beams because you're a long spindle and the beams are studding all the way down both lengths. And if you can spot that many missiles to reliable intercept all of the beams, you wouldn't have needed to get into beam range at all.

Even CM wedges are tens of kilometers large, far larger than even the largest superdreadnought. If you assume a perfect placement of the wedge (never mind how impossible that is to pull off), then there's no way a direct-fire weapon can fire past it.

This form of defense may have higher value for a Q-ship merchy, but because it's relying on spotting missiles into space for interception, you're risking giving the raider a chance to realize whats happening and launching missiles instead of using beams too.

I don't think it has any value. By the time you're forced to use this tactic, you've probably already lost the battle, and any flourish like this will not turn it around in your favour.

The E wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Broadside to broadside is too large to reliably intercept all the beams because you're a long spindle and the beams are studding all the way down both lengths. And if you can spot that many missiles to reliable intercept all of the beams, you wouldn't have needed to get into beam range at all.

Even CM wedges are tens of kilometers large, far larger than even the largest superdreadnought. If you assume a perfect placement of the wedge (never mind how impossible that is to pull off), then there's no way a direct-fire weapon can fire past it.

I wouldn't say even CM wedges are tens of kilometers large. Probably no more than a km long, by perhaps half that wide. But even doubled up in size, you'd still need more than one because their speed can't be stepped down. You'd have to activate their wedges staggered to keep your vulnerable side protected, and all your attacker needs to do, is exactly what happened to Honor in one of her [many] battles. The ship she was fighting was hitting her wedge with at least one beam every second, just waiting for her to roll ship and those beams would carve right through her.

This form of defense may have higher value for a Q-ship merchy, but because it's relying on spotting missiles into space for interception, you're risking giving the raider a chance to realize whats happening and launching missiles instead of using beams too.

I don't think it has any value. By the time you're forced to use this tactic, you've probably already lost the battle, and any flourish like this will not turn it around in your favour.[/quote]

The only time we've seen, where some form of missile interception of beams would have 'worked' was one of the armed merchant cruisers sent into Silesia. Two Sultan's closing in on one of the Caravan's, and they hit her a few times with beams during the very short engagement.

However, if she'd tried to use missiles to intercept, you'd have to do something like Dahak and spot your missiles inside your wedge somewhere to use tractors to guide them into the right position and somehow orient them properly. But that act of spotting the missiles also means chancing them being spotted. And if they get spotted, you lose the element of surprise, which like you pointed out won't stop laserhead shipkiller missiles.


Essentially, this form of point defense had a very very limited lifetime, and died as soon as even remotely viable RD's started becoming available, even the pre-Ghost Rider's would have clubbed this on the head and dragged it into the dark to do dirty, dirty things to it.

Somtaaw wrote:I wouldn't say even CM wedges are tens of kilometers large. Probably no more than a km long, by perhaps half that wide. But even doubled up in size, you'd still need more than one because their speed can't be stepped down. You'd have to activate their wedges staggered to keep your vulnerable side protected, and all your attacker needs to do, is exactly what happened to Honor in one of her [many] battles. The ship she was fighting was hitting her wedge with at least one beam every second, just waiting for her to roll ship and those beams would carve right through her.

I had it in my head that a CM's wedge was 10 km wide...
But even at 1x.5 km it's big enough to (briefly) cover the entire side of a ship (if the missile steers parallel to the ship)

The real problems seem to be that there's no way to step the drive down low enough to pace the ship and the wedge crossing between you and your enemy totally blinds your sensors. Given the accel of a CM it'll zip the entire length of even an SD in under 0.04 of a second; though you really need to see how fast it'll cover 10km since that'll clear what I remember it's wedge length as being. That take slightly longer, a whopping 0.13 seconds. The later is at least long enough to likely exceed the duration of a modern graser's shot; so the wedge might block one entire shot. If you got the timing absolutely perfect.

But if you wanted to hide behind a wedge in energy range why not roll and use your own wedge? For that matter you could use a recon drone which would be able to go slowely enough to fly formation off your broadside. You'd still be blind though; which means that your opponent could pretty much pop laser heads across your open bow or stern; those could fire and shotgun your probable location the instant they cleared the covering wedge; which is also the first instant you'd know they were coming. No way you're point defense can react in time...

Annachie wrote:There's a line in Ashes of Victory along the lines of cm's can't stop lasers and grasers.

But surely they can. Timing might be a touch tricky but surely it's doable.

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Why would you have to use CMs or any type of missile for that matter? In the Book A Call to Arms they did use a missile to block a laser shot on HMS Casey because that was all that was available but surely anything with a wedge can be used to block a mass laserhead attack. Remember the duration of the laser pulse from a laserhead is very short. Also the geometry of the attack is such that you are not worried about every laserhead, you are only worried about those that would penetrate between the roof & floor of your wedge.

I could envision some navy coming up with a system whereby they deploy a remote controlled drone on the flanks of their ships, much like the Manties deploy Keyhole. It would not even need to have the wedge powered up until the last minute or so, just so long as it is at full power once the laserheads detonate. The drone could then roll its wedge so that its roof would be to the attacking laserheads fire.

This would not be a perfect shield. However as they say up North where I came from; "Owt's betta'n nowt." It would also be difficult to control & co-ordinate but it could be done but as Mike Henke realised in Storm from the Shadows there was nothing wrong with a crude technique if it was also an effective one.

Rincewind wrote:I could envision some navy coming up with a system whereby they deploy a remote controlled drone on the flanks of their ships, much like the Manties deploy Keyhole. It would not even need to have the wedge powered up until the last minute or so, just so long as it is at full power once the laserheads detonate. The drone could then roll its wedge so that its roof would be to the attacking laserheads fire.

This would not be a perfect shield. However as they say up North where I came from; "Owt's betta'n nowt." It would also be difficult to control & co-ordinate but it could be done but as Mike Henke realised in Storm from the Shadows there was nothing wrong with a crude technique if it was also an effective one.

As I pointed out this has the problem that you can't see through the drone's wedge. So as soon as it brings up it's wedge you're blinded to all the incoming missiles. (Unless you have something like Keyhole stuck far enough ahead or behind you to see around the wedge shadowing your broadside).

If the incoming fire is stupid, and there's big gaps between salvos, that's fine. The first salvo will waste all it's fire on the interposed wedge and you can drop it, or rotate the drone and let your broadside sensors pick up the trailing salvos again.

But if the incoming missiles have a little better AI, or the attacker risked diverting some fire for a bow or stern shot, you've got a problem. You can't see the missiles, so you can't see if any alter course to try and pass ahead or astern of you. So your point defense is caught flatfooted as they break past the interposed drone wedge.
(They can either got for blindfire at your estimated location the instant they have a clear angle; before your defenses have a prayer of reacting, or hold off for a moment to try to get deep enough to have a classic down the throat shot with no interposed sidewall)



I guess with keyhole, if you positioned them properly, you could see and track incoming with a drone wedge off your broadside. But even then I'm not sure that's better than just rolling your own wedge towards the missile. The drone provides better coverage, but it also prevents you from using half your CMs. I'd suspect in most situations that having all your CM tubes avalible trumps having an impenetrable wedge off one broadside.

Jonathan_S wrote:I had it in my head that a CM's wedge was 10 km

It's either a missile or CM that has a 10km wide wedge. Can't remember off-hand.