Defensive pods

Thank you for those who have been commenting about not fitting everything I want in a half pod. I was searching for the pod and missile dimensions and all google will give me are images mostly from MaxxQ so...

@MaxxQ, borrowing one of your images.
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/P ... -465723504

I did not know there was a pod that had 14 x Mk 16 missiles.

Half a pod makes that space for 7 missiles plus grav launchers.
A short range Dazzler can fit into a Mk-16, so that means the space for 3 Mk-16s plus their launchers, plus half of the original pod's fusion reactor and bunkerage space can be used to put in
1) slightly smaller fusion reactor (compared to the original)
2) impeller nodes for the pod
3) Ghost Rider based drone technology - Elric battle era
4) Bunkerage, bunkerage, bunkerage - well maybe not so much since these are drones and these are expected to go boom if they do their jobs.

Basically are you suggesting a pod that becomes a Ghost Rider type decoy drone after launching its missiles?

I don't know the difference in costs between a real Ghost Rider drone and the standard missile pod to determine if the resulting pod would be cost effective, also whether or not such a beast would be effective at both purposes.

George J. Smith wrote:Basically are you suggesting a pod that becomes a Ghost Rider type decoy drone after launching its missiles?

I don't know the difference in costs between a real Ghost Rider drone and the standard missile pod to determine if the resulting pod would be cost effective, also whether or not such a beast would be effective at both purposes.

Yes, it's something like that, except that it can start pretending to be a ship before it launches the on-board dazzlers and it can be placed in front, way out in front, of the real ship and absorb a lot of the enemy's fire.

Right now, a pod after launching its missiles are nothing but space hazards, doing nothing except moving at the speed they had when they were deployed. Just waiting to be recovered and reloaded (or not). If this pod survives combat, it can easily get back to its mothership for reloading/refueling.

Another possible use.

As 'system' defense force.

If I remember correctly, the GA is thinking of seeding allied star systems with missile pods and then leaving the system defense LACs and MYCROFT to keep the system safe.
By adding some of these pods into the mix, the LAC force can spoof the enemy that there are far larger and more dangerous combat vessels in the system. In addition, the enemy forces wouldn't be wondering where the control links for the system defense missiles were based, hiding the existence of MYCROFT.

Rakhmamort wrote:Another possible use.

As 'system' defense force.

If I remember correctly, the GA is thinking of seeding allied star systems with missile pods and then leaving the system defense LACs and MYCROFT to keep the system safe.
By adding some of these pods into the mix, the LAC force can spoof the enemy that there are far larger and more dangerous combat vessels in the system. In addition, the enemy forces wouldn't be wondering where the control links for the system defense missiles were based, hiding the existence of MYCROFT.

.... except LACs already bring their own EW and decoys with them. They're carried about Ferrets, or Cimeterre-Beta's, which are missile heavy.

We keep telling you, there is literally nothing your pod's you keep pitching can do, that any member nation of the Grand Alliance isn't capable of doing better with an existing ship.

Modify your suggestions based on the assumption of SLN, or MAlign, and you might start having better luck, because the Grayson Space Navy, the Republican Havenite Navy, the Royal Manticoran Navy, hell even the Imperial Andermani Navy don't need pods that carry zero offensive capability and are purely defensive in nature.

Rakhmamort wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Sorry I must have misunderstood your intention when you talked about a ship dumping all its defensive pods the moment an enemy was detected, and then letting them keep station with it for the rest of the fight. I assumed that meant that you had to have a significant number of them (if they're going to last for the whole fight) and have them positioned at the aft end of your pod rails (so you can dump them the moment the enemy is sighted)

Those two assumptions let me to think you were thinking of loading up the back couple minutes of the pod rails with your defensive drone-pods.

But clearly I misunderstood - can you please provide more detail on how you were thinking these defensive drone-pods would be loaded and dropped? Thanks

You didn't misunderstand when the pods are supposed to be deployed. What I don't understand is for somebody who will need 2 minutes worth of defensive pods.
Let me do some math here. In 1 minute, a pod layer can launch 5 (or 6) salvos of pods. That is 5 x 6 MDM pods which means 5 x 12 of the proposed defensive pods. In 2 minutes, that's 120 defensive pods.
1 ship using 120 drones is, I don't know, I don't have the words to describe what the tac officer was thinking or trying to do.

I get that you don't need 120 decoys. But it takes a lot of dazzlers to screw up the targeting and you're only talking about 4 per pod-drone. So you'd probably be using at least 16 dazzlers per incoming salvo you want to disrupt. Your 120 drones run out of defensive dazzler fire after only 30 salvos of incoming fire. And since a podlayer firing MDMs could roll and fire over 4 salvos before the first one reached attack range (or your counter fire reaches them)... That seems like it might be a slight problem.

Rakhmamort wrote:

A half sized pod might be capable of being dropped slightly faster than a full sized one, but I doubt they could do so twice as fast. (Maybe if the two halfpods could be bolted together so the pod rails and deployment hardware could always treat it as a full sized pods - so it only split after being dropped.

I've already pointed out that it would be a nice feature. 2 half pods to have the contour of 1 standard pod. Better handling and all that it entails.

Given that you have to have fairly specific hull shapes to install an impeller ring I'm still pretty skeptical that you can squeeze on into somethign half the size of a pod while only needing to give up something like 34% of it's volume - much less that you can do so while keeping the shape of 1/2 a pod so 2 can be bolted together into the shape of a whole normal missile pod. Just rounding off the pod into a roughly cylindrical shape to be compatible with an impeller ring would cause you to lose almost as much interior volume as that.


Going from MDMs to SDMs saves no more than 18% space (since in the discussion between Honor and White Haven in her Library in IEH it's state that switching from capacitor powered SDMs to capacitor powered MDMs causes an 18% reduction in magazine storage. And a fully effective SDM dazzler needs a fusion reactor; so it's bigger than a capacitor SDM, and a Mk23 is smaller than a 1st gen capacitor power MDM so in relative you save less than that by switching up the missiles). And dropping 1/5th your missiles saves you at most 20% of the volume. Combined you're looking at freeing up 34% of the interior for the drone systems (enlarge fuel tank, impeller ring, decoy emitters and computers, etc)
But making the pod roughtly cylindrical so it's compatible with an impeller ring drops the usable volume by 21% all on it's own. So all your changes really only freed up 12% of the original half pod volume to squeeze everything into.

So yeah, I remain quite skeptical that this works without TARDIS technology. (Now could you fit, say, 5 SDM dazzlers and the drone/decoy hardware into a full sized pod? That seems more likely)

Jonathan_S wrote:And a fully effective SDM dazzler needs a fusion reactor;

Capacitor powered LAC missiles have both dazzlers and dragons teeth. Quote chpater 39 of "Ashes of Victory"
Tremaine's Nineteenth Wing led the assault, and he watched his Ferrets salvo their shipkillers. A deadly swarm of missiles streaked towards the sitting targets of the main Peep force, and the crest of that wave of destruction was heavily seeded with Dazzlers and Dragons' Teeth, two more selections from the LACs' arsenal of Ghost Rider systems. The downsized versions which could be crammed into a LAC-sized missile were far less individually capable than the versions capital missiles could carry, but they were nastier than anything any LAC had ever been able to deploy before.

Because the warhead space for a LAC missile is smaller than that for a capital missile, the missiles were less capable. My guess is that since the LAC's dragons tooth emulates 54 missiles, the Mk-31 version would be 100, and probably 80 for the Mk-16 The dazzler would be more powerful with the bigger missiles, Comparing the three, if the LAC version was 1Tw, the Mk-16 would be 1.5 and the Mk-31 would be 2Tw, for example.

The main difference between capacitor and fusion EW birds is duration. Where a LAC EW bird would have a duration of a few seconds (less than 10?) a fusion EW bird could have a duration of many minutes or hours.

My openion is the defensive pod is a solution in search of a problem. Even during operation buttercup, with capacitor MDM's, to quote Ashes of Victory on EW drones:
was a completely independent unit with an endurance of up to twenty minutes from internal power alone, depending on the strength of the sensor image it had to duplicate. And one that could be fired from one of the new capital missile tubes, at that.

If a capacitor EW bird that has an acceleration of 1,000G's and an endurance of 20 minutes, a fusion bird should have an endurance of several hours. Put a single ring of 10 bird pods and you have 30 EW drones and 30 dazzlers that last the entire engagement.

Than there is Keyhole. Notice that RFC has never said what they contain?

Keyhole 1 is 20K tons. If I was building it I would add a permanent and reusable dazzler of a power that is at least 10 times more powerful than a missiles dazzler. I would also put in multiple drone projectors so that it gives the equivalent of multiple SD's.

And what about Keyhole 2 which is 50K tons. It can't take all that much more mass just for the FTL transmitter, so there must be even more defensive EW and other things installed.

Somtaaw wrote:
.... except LACs already bring their own EW and decoys with them. They're carried about Ferrets, or Cimeterre-Beta's, which are missile heavy.

Did you even understand the use I was referring to or you assumed the drones are to act as if they are LACs?

We keep telling you, there is literally nothing your pod's you keep pitching can do, that any member nation of the Grand Alliance isn't capable of doing better with an existing ship.

Wow! Just wow! All this time you thought the defensive pods are to IMPROVE on the capabilities of the current generation warships.
FYI, I have stated at the very start the underlying reasons why USING the MOST advanced tech against the SLN at the start of the war with SL is not a very good idea.
1) Most advanced toys = most expensive ones.
2) You are giving the enemy data on your equipment.

The GA doesn't need to pull out all the stops. The SLN equipment isn't as good as Haven's as of Buttercup and the RMN already wiped the floor with them with what they had. The SLN would already be totally f@cked up with tech at that level.
With the expenses RMN and GN are using up to rebuild their infrastructure, they don't need to spend for things that will OVERKILL the enemy when they can produce equipment that will do just enough killing.

Modify your suggestions based on the assumption of SLN, or MAlign, and you might start having better luck, because the Grayson Space Navy, the Republican Havenite Navy, the Royal Manticoran Navy, hell even the Imperial Andermani Navy don't need pods that carry zero offensive capability and are purely defensive in nature.

Why? I am proposing the defensive pods to be deployed by the GA against the SLN. With Apollo and Ghost Rider Drones, no amount of Dazzlers and drones are going to help the SLN. You can't spoof an Apollo wave when the recon drones can read the names of your ships off your hull.

Jonathan_S wrote:I get that you don't need 120 decoys. But it takes a lot of dazzlers to screw up the targeting and you're only talking about 4 per pod-drone. So you'd probably be using at least 16 dazzlers per incoming salvo you want to disrupt. Your 120 drones run out of defensive dazzler fire after only 30 salvos of incoming fire. And since a podlayer firing MDMs could roll and fire over 4 salvos before the first one reached attack range (or your counter fire reaches them)... That seems like it might be a slight problem.

If the enemy fire is that thick and your drones are still functional but out of dazzlers, you can use your shipboard launchers to provide the dazzlers for the defensive pods, or you can roll out a new set of defensive pods.
You don't need to dump 120 of them all at once. How many you need to use and how often you'll need to replenish the pods would be determined during the development of doctrine for its use.

Given that you have to have fairly specific hull shapes to install an impeller ring I'm still pretty skeptical that you can squeeze on into somethign half the size of a pod while only needing to give up something like 34% of it's volume - much less that you can do so while keeping the shape of 1/2 a pod so 2 can be bolted together into the shape of a whole normal missile pod. Just rounding off the pod into a roughly cylindrical shape to be compatible with an impeller ring would cause you to lose almost as much interior volume as that.

Why are you skeptical? The shape must be sort of long and straight. An elongated box fits that description and you can fit 4 missiles in one. Just add your impeller ring at the back.
If you need to make the shape a bit rounded, by all means, feel free.
If it cant be contoured like the most recent pods, then it cant be done that way, just use the flatpack design as your base. As I said, it's just an engineering problem.

Going from MDMs to SDMs saves no more than 18% space (since in the discussion between Honor and White Haven in her Library in IEH it's state that switching from capacitor powered SDMs to capacitor powered MDMs causes an 18% reduction in magazine storage. And a fully effective SDM dazzler needs a fusion reactor; so it's bigger than a capacitor SDM, and a Mk23 is smaller than a 1st gen capacitor power MDM so in relative you save less than that by switching up the missiles). And dropping 1/5th your missiles saves you at most 20% of the volume. Combined you're looking at freeing up 34% of the interior for the drone systems (enlarge fuel tank, impeller ring, decoy emitters and computers, etc)
But making the pod roughtly cylindrical so it's compatible with an impeller ring drops the usable volume by 21% all on it's own. So all your changes really only freed up 12% of the original half pod volume to squeeze everything into.

So yeah, I remain quite skeptical that this works without TARDIS technology. (Now could you fit, say, 5 SDM dazzlers and the drone/decoy hardware into a full sized pod? That seems more likely)

I've seen the 14 x Mk-16 flatpod image from MaxxQ's page.
1) Would you agree that a Mk-16 would be able to handle the short range Dazzler I want to use?
2) Do you agree that an elongated box could easily be installed with an impeller ring?
3) Would the space for 3 missiles be enough for all the drone requirements that the decoy/pod is supposed to perform?

darrell wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:And a fully effective SDM dazzler needs a fusion reactor;

Capacitor powered LAC missiles have both dazzlers and dragons teeth. Quote chpater 39 of "Ashes of Victory"
Tremaine's Nineteenth Wing led the assault, and he watched his Ferrets salvo their shipkillers. A deadly swarm of missiles streaked towards the sitting targets of the main Peep force, and the crest of that wave of destruction was heavily seeded with Dazzlers and Dragons' Teeth, two more selections from the LACs' arsenal of Ghost Rider systems. The downsized versions which could be crammed into a LAC-sized missile were far less individually capable than the versions capital missiles could carry, but they were nastier than anything any LAC had ever been able to deploy before.

Because the warhead space for a LAC missile is smaller than that for a capital missile, the missiles were less capable. My guess is that since the LAC's dragons tooth emulates 54 missiles, the Mk-31 version would be 100, and probably 80 for the Mk-16 The dazzler would be more powerful with the bigger missiles, Comparing the three, if the LAC version was 1Tw, the Mk-16 would be 1.5 and the Mk-31 would be 2Tw, for example.

The main difference between capacitor and fusion EW birds is duration. Where a LAC EW bird would have a duration of a few seconds (less than 10?) a fusion EW bird could have a duration of many minutes or hours.

My openion is the defensive pod is a solution in search of a problem. Even during operation buttercup, with capacitor MDM's, to quote Ashes of Victory on EW drones:
was a completely independent unit with an endurance of up to twenty minutes from internal power alone, depending on the strength of the sensor image it had to duplicate. And one that could be fired from one of the new capital missile tubes, at that.

If a capacitor EW bird that has an acceleration of 1,000G's and an endurance of 20 minutes, a fusion bird should have an endurance of several hours. Put a single ring of 10 bird pods and you have 30 EW drones and 30 dazzlers that last the entire engagement.

Than there is Keyhole. Notice that RFC has never said what they contain?

Keyhole 1 is 20K tons. If I was building it I would add a permanent and reusable dazzler of a power that is at least 10 times more powerful than a missiles dazzler. I would also put in multiple drone projectors so that it gives the equivalent of multiple SD's.

And what about Keyhole 2 which is 50K tons. It can't take all that much more mass just for the FTL transmitter, so there must be even more defensive EW and other things installed.

And there is a minimum ship tonnage for it to be Keyhole capable. Not all ships can have Keyhole 1, much less Keyhole 2.

For smaller ships, they can beef up their drone count and defensive capabilities by taking along some of these pods.

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Take into consideration what the SLN is planning on doing. Commerce raiding. Merchant ships aren't going to be escorted by SDs. Probably not even BCs. The smaller and/or older ships will be the ones getting that duty. The SLN isn't going to attack without numerical superiority and that means our escorts are going to be outnumbered and has to survive long enough to kill off the raiders.
The escorts may not have the hull space to limpet the pods, but the merchant ships do and they do not have weapons ports or fire control sensors that will be blocked by these pods.