Defensive pods

Jonathan_S wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:
I'll grant those points. What bothers me, is that the Andermani ships were refit into Keyhole-II and Apollo capability and not even a single division of Home Fleet was refit to have it. I realize the intent being putting most of Apollo capable ships into Eighth Fleet to give the illusion of already having it broadly deployed. As you pointed out, even during the Buttercup build up, some of those new-build, new-tech ships were deployment in penny packets which also gave the opportunity for limited combat testing, rather than just endless simulations and wargames against officers who know its rough capabilities.

I think that's actually two only slightly related issues.

It makes total sense to me that the Andermani SD(P)s were the ones that received priority for the Keyhole II refits over the older RMN Podlayers.
Even the older RMN podlayers were superior to the IAN's so if you're pulling a ship off the line for a major refit you reduce your combat effectiveness less if its an IAN ship than an RMN podlayer.
So once you make a decision to pull any podlayer out of service for a refit the IAN ones are the ones you'd pull. (Also you really wanted to give them a general tech update to give them the latest compensators so they could keep up with RMN formations, and probably other things where Manticore had an edge. There are probably some abiilty to do refit work in parrallel so that doing the all the upgrades at once to an IAN SD(P) is less yard time than doing everything buy Keyhole to the IAN ship then doing only Keyhole II to the older RMN SD(P). (And might even only barely longer than doing just Keyhole II to a pre-Keyhole (I) RMN ship)

However which ships got Keyhole II refit priority is only slightly related to whether you assign all Keyhole II capable ships to 8th fleet or assign some to Home Fleet. I can see a bit more of a point to why you're bothered that Home Fleet wasn't assigned any Apollo capable ships - regardless of which Navy those ships came from. But either way Manticore was clearly gambling that they'd have long enough to get more Apollo capable ships in service and/or get Apollo upgraded forts and system defense pods installed around all their planets.

Home Fleet has to stay in the home system, so if they went in for even routine maintenance, they're right there, so why not do the work if you've got a Home Fleet assigned ship in the slip for any reason.

Instead, it seemed that if they did get overhauled and received the KHII update, they were swapped out into an Eighth Fleet bound squadron and would be replaced with some other non-Apollo ship.

Somtaaw wrote:]

Home Fleet has to stay in the home system, so if they went in for even routine maintenance, they're right there, so why not do the work if you've got a Home Fleet assigned ship in the slip for any reason.

Instead, it seemed that if they did get overhauled and received the KHII update, they were swapped out into an Eighth Fleet bound squadron and would be replaced with some other non-Apollo ship.

The question of what ships do you upgrade also has to take in to account how much of the new equipment you have available. So what do you upgrade the home fleet for the defense of the home system from what is considered an unlikely all out attack or upgrade you attack force that is pounding the enemy in to defeat? Hindsight is 20/20.

Theisman did say that if he knew how much of the new equipment had been available and ready to use he would have never attacked Manticore system.

Somtaaw wrote:
To use your own words, wow just wow. Have you just not read the books at all? The ONLY time technology was kept hidden from their enemies was immediately pre-Buttercup. And that was only because Manticore wanted the new podlayers, LAC's and MDM's to be an absolute knockout punch. And even when they finally pulled the trigger, they ONLY EVEN HAD less than 60 podnoughts, a few squadrons worth of CLACs and somewhere between 2000 and 4000 LAC's to start off Buttercup.

If you read the books as you seem to be claiming, Honor's discussion on her flag bridge right while they were waiting for Filareta's decision would tell you that the GA would prefer to hide as much of their capability as possible while showing enough to make the SLN force capitulate.

It's always a good idea to have an ace up your sleeve. That strategy will always give you more wiggle room especially when the missiles are flying.

Half the battle in discovering new tech is the path to knowing if it is possible. If you show the SL that something can be done, the scientists in the hundreds of high tech worlds would be halfway to their goal. It can be done is already taken cared of, they only need to go after HOW the first guys did it.

Every single other time a Haven Sector Navy came up with new technology, it's used... on the frontlines, with little to no "hiding" that it was there and present. Every. Time.

After pointing out an example where tech has been hidden, now you claim that all new discoveries were used almost immediately.
Your already provided the counter to this statement.

So to use bad tech merely to hide the good tech you're REALLY relying upon, just doubles the chances for your enemies to scavenge something. Because that's what any ship relying on a "defense pod" would be doing.... deploying defense pods as a "hey look how we're padding our defenses" meanwhile they're also deploying Ghost Rider, LACs in fleet missile defense, fusion powered flatpack pods, Dragon's Teeth and Dazzlers, Loreleis, and maybe even full up Keyhole-II's and Apollo.

Ghost rider tech is BAD? Just because it is not the most recent technology doesn't make it bad.

As for the use of all up tech in battles. In which battles did the Solarian forces take home with them complete battlefield recordings of the entire top of the line GA tech?

I know of zero instances. If you can name one, then I'll agree that 'hiding' their full capabilities at this point is moot.

Unless you're honestly, and seriously advocating a ship deliberately use absolutely terrible defense ideas, which increases the risk of the ship being shot to hell, simply to avoid waving the "hey look at my super advanced tech that you don't have, nyah nyah you can't haaaave it!"

Using longer endurance Ghost Rider based drones with additional capability to blind the enemy atack missiles is a terrible defense idea? Can you explain how you came out with that analysis. For all intents and purposes, the SLN's combat technology is not even p to par with Havens during Buttercup. If the RMN took Haven's forces easily during that time, how can you say that the RMN tech is terrible?

And we've seen many many ships that have been shot in combat, and don't totally blow up. So unless every ship ever used in future SLN or MAlign battles carries exactly zero of the very best & latest Manticoran technology, all you have to do is win just one battle and board every single intact ship looking for parts. Well, win and admit that your "not invented here" syndrome is stupid, and that someone else is allowed to have better technology than you do, which so far the SLN cant and the MAlign keeps losing everytime it tries to get Manty tech.

SLN getting tech from destroyed Manticoran ships would mean the SLN would need to control the battlefield and that the Manticoran officers, all of them, forgot to trigger the scuttling charges. You can add all the other anti-tampering devices that are installed within the devices themselves. Good luck running after pieces of wreckage travelling in high velocity, going in all directions. It's already hard enough to go after a space suit that lost its homing beacon, what more for inert pieces of metal going much faster and not even communicating with the 'rescue' vessel. lol!

As for the MAN getting tech off Manticore, my educated guess is it's the other way around. MAlign already have reports of all the tech Manticore has. You can be sure that all their geniuses are doing their best to create their own versions of it with their own twists.

But the MAlign keeps trying to win, while the SLN is so obviously incompetent, it would take more Battle of Manticore levels of handwavium induced stupidity to allow the SLN to win against Manticoran tech.

Again, Wow! Just wow! Ghost Rider is Manticoran tech. You called using it Bad and Terible earlier in your post now you say SLN will not win against Manticoran tech unless David decides to make the GA commanding officer have single digit IQ levels.
Why are you against using these set of Manticoran tech again if you believe the SLN isn't going to have a chance at winning battles?

Duckk wrote:

Kytheros wrote:Which brings up the question - what would have happened if Manticore had sat on Apollo longer than they did? Would they have had time to bring it into broader deployment? Would Manticore (and allies) have had the time to equip enough ships with Apollo to go straight for Haven in a knockout strike?

Assuming that the Torch summit still failed under this scenario and Eighth Fleet sat on the defensive in order to get more Apollo capable SD(P)s, it's doubtful things would have changed too drastically. Pritchart had ordered Theisman to begin deploying for Beatrice when the negotiations collapsed. While the loss at Lovat caused him to push the button immediately, all his preparations were basically complete anyways. It's unlikely that Operation Beatrice would have been postponed much more than a few weeks from when it actually launched.

This depends on whether Home fleet receives a squadron or 2 of Keyhole II equipped SDs. If they did, they could have chosen to let the Haven fleet come into the system defense pods' range and let the Apollo equipped ships soften the enemy force before they dived in and take the battle closer.
With the number of system defense pods in the home system, they can flood Haven's fleet's defenses while the Apollo ships are taking small or not so small bites out of Haven's wall, carefully directing enough missiles to eat up a squadron or two of SDs per system defense pod salvo.

Somtaaw wrote:I'll grant those points. What bothers me, is that the Andermani ships were refit into Keyhole-II and Apollo capability and not even a single division of Home Fleet was refit to have it. I realize the intent being putting most of Apollo capable ships into Eighth Fleet to give the illusion of already having it broadly deployed. As you pointed out, even during the Buttercup build up, some of those new-build, new-tech ships were deployment in penny packets which also gave the opportunity for limited combat testing, rather than just endless simulations and wargames against officers who know its rough capabilities.

Because the storyline needed to dispose of Home Fleet so there would be an opening for
1) 'convince' the SL that Manticore's home system is very very weak defensively.
2) Kill a lot of Havenites and Manticorans just before the MAlign plans to take both of them down is revealed giving them a reason to team up.
3) Give the Havenites an opening to 'provide' military support that made the alliance very much acceptable to both Haven and Manticore.
4) Find a way to dispose of semi-useless SDs still in Manticore inventory.

Buttercup was the only true occasion of hiding new tech while in a state of active hostilities.

Early FTL drones at Grayson were kept hidden, but only because neither the Havenites nor Masadan's could figure it out, it wasn't a secret kept long however.

Missile pods, Moriarty, Zizka/Tripple Ripple, and all related things are too flashy to avoid notice. One shot pops all.


I think it was Caparelli who (some paraphrasing again because I don't feel like digging up the quote atm) admitted he would have liked to have kept Apollo under wraps longer. But he understood they [Manticore] were backed up against a wall, and there was no point to keeping a secret weapon hidden, it's there to be used.

Any strategist worth his salt would hide his full capabilities. It does not just apply to weapons and defense tech available for his forces, it also applies to the number of ships he has, where they are stationed and in what concentrations. It also applies to who the officers are and their capabilities. You hide your strengths and weaknesses.
That is how one conducts a war or combat. If you show everything you have, the enemy will try to find ways to counter them. Look at the dance between Manticore and Haven, hell, look at the dance between NATO and the USSR during the cold war.

Jonathan_S wrote:An engineering problem, yes. One that can fit in the small size you specify, that I'm not convinced of.

The nodes of the impeller ring must be on the outside of the hull of the object they accelerate, and they're a circular ring. To achieve those 2 goals (outside the hull, and circular ring) you have to build the impeller ring large enough that the longest corner-to-corner diagonal of the squarish cross section of the pod is <= the diameter of the impeller ring. In other words the nodes stick out beyond the side of the pod and stick out even more along the sides than at the corners.

You can do that easily enough; though if drone drives are anything like ship drives you're throwing away acceleration by doing that since you're paying the penalty for enclosing and compensating volume that's not actually filled by your hull. Still a drone has such a high acceleration relative to a ship that that shouldn't matter if you only want these drones to fly in formation with your ships - they'll remain plenty fast for that. The bigger problem is that if you saw a pod in half, then stick on a drive ring that's wider than the pod you now can't stick two of them together and treat them like a single pod - the drive rings impinge on the adjacent half-pod.

Do they really have to extend beyond the 'contours' of the pod? If you look at the images of ships, the nodes are placed right behind the hammerheads. If you look at hammer-head on images, you cannot see the nodes.
As for not being able to stick them together when their nodes are 'sticking' out, why not? Imagine the 69 position and then place 'contours' on the pod casing that will 'match' with the nodes sticking out from the other pod.

As I said, it's just engineering.

You could fix that by taking borrowing a trick from the Q-ship Sirius and run the nodes out on rams of some sort before activating them. Engineering problem, engineering solution.
But now you need even more volume avalible inside the pod because you have to have room to fully retract all your drive nodes, plus room for the extension arms to run them out into their operational positions.

Its kind of a toss-up whether all that complexity and volume would give you more capability than slicing off the corners of the half-pod to make the pod and impeller ring all fit within the size limits of a non-impeller driven half-pod.

So yes, you can engineer solutions, but it's not always possible to engineer all the solutions necessary to hit the cost, or size, or performance targets the original plan hoped for - and in this case I really do think that you're trying to cram 10 lbs of stuff in a 5 lbs bag.

At the start, I was just pointing out there was a missing 5th missile where most of the space will come from. That missile has all the things needed. Nodes (you reposition them to the pod itself), Fusion plant, you increase in size and use up the space taken up by half of the original fusion plant of the pod itself.

With the realization you can fit 14 Mk-16 in a pod, it is obvious that a half flat-pack can fit in everything needed. You have the space/weight of 3 sets of nodes, space of 3 missile fusion plants, 3 warheads and 3 grav drivers.

The bag has enough space.

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However, backing out of this rabbit hole and going back to the 10,000 ft view I'm having trouble seeing why it's worth diverting Manticore's limited to non-existant production capability to design and produce this complex new system, with it's inherent reductions in the carrying ship's offensive combat endurance[1], and inherent complication of tactical flexibility[2], just to avoid showing off your best missile defense to the SLN.

Manticore can easily build missile production facilities that will not need the most sophisticated parts. Building production plants for your cutting edge tech products is probably going to need specialized facilities. The contents of this defensive pod isn't going to need Manticore's most complex, most able, most etc tech.

As for your other concerns, a ship's combat endurance lasts only as long as the ship is combat capable. If you improve your ship's defenses, it's combat endurance increases.

As for tactical complexities, it's a drone. A better drone. How can that be too complex?
And it's not just to hide your best tech, it's also to save money. Manticore has to rebuild a lot of facilities, it has to build a whole new fleet, it has to finance the uplift of the Talbot quadrant planets and its Silesian teritories, it will also need fund so it can offer good deals to planets it liberates from the Verge and the Shell. Its cash flow is going to be very very tight. Yeah, they got Haven as a new trading partner but remember that most of Haven's planets are not rich. I don't know how much improvement their economies had under the new government but most of them were barely breaking even before the new regime.

On the one hand, given how badly the effective range of Apollo or even Mk16 MDMs outmatches the Cataphract, it's unlikely that most combat would involve the GA forces taking effective missile fire in the first place.
But second if you want to use less capable missile defense simple forgo using the new (and scarce) Lorelei decoys and use the older Ghost Rider or tethered decoys. And if those are still too capable for you it should be trivial to adjust their software routines to emit less sophisticated ECM or to just turn down the power level of their emissions.
Total expended effort is minimal, it doesn't displace or complicate your offensive missile fire, you can do it today without waiting to get production facilities back online and new inferior tech distributed, and if it turns out you're too hard pressed you should be able to restore your full power and complexity with basically the push of a button.

[1] It displaces anti-ship missile pods.
[2] Having to mix the defensive pods mixed into the pod rails with your offensive ones.

All these options are applicable only for your pod combatants. I envision these half pod-drones to be useful for heavy cruisers and lighter combatants. Those that carry a limited number of drones and limited number of missile tubes. Remember that when you do launch a Ghost Rider missile drone, that means you aren't launching an attack bird.

Most of the engineering stuff I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on whether it'll all fit, so I'm not going to rehash it since there's not enough text-ev to resolve it.

Rakhmamort wrote:As for tactical complexities, it's a drone. A better drone. How can that be too complex?

That was in the footnote - you wanted them carried on pod rail (for pod layers) which means your dealing with potentially shuffling offensive and defensive pods around in your deployment queue (as opposed to normal GR drones which can be deployed via missile tube or boat boat)
Though unlike normal drones I guess you also have to judge when, and how many, dazzlers to use defensively.

Basically this seems like a lot of unneeded complexity.
For that matter if you wnat to use dazzlers defensively what's the advantage of cramming them into the same platform as the decoy? Why not go for the same end using existing pods filled with dazzlers (that could be towed during the tactical fight by tractor until needed) plus standard ghost rider decoys?

On the one hand, given how badly the effective range of Apollo or even Mk16 MDMs outmatches the Cataphract, it's unlikely that most combat would involve the GA forces taking effective missile fire in the first place.
But second if you want to use less capable missile defense simple forgo using the new (and scarce) Lorelei decoys and use the older Ghost Rider or tethered decoys. And if those are still too capable for you it should be trivial to adjust their software routines to emit less sophisticated ECM or to just turn down the power level of their emissions.
Total expended effort is minimal, it doesn't displace or complicate your offensive missile fire, you can do it today without waiting to get production facilities back online and new inferior tech distributed, and if it turns out you're too hard pressed you should be able to restore your full power and complexity with basically the push of a button.

All these options are applicable only for your pod combatants. I envision these half pod-drones to be useful for heavy cruisers and lighter combatants. Those that carry a limited number of drones and limited number of missile tubes. Remember that when you do launch a Ghost Rider missile drone, that means you aren't launching an attack bird.[/quote]
Wait, tube or boat bay launched drones (the current ghost ride decoys) are "only for your pod combatants" but free flying swarms of half-ish pod sized drone-decoys are are easily usable by everyone?

You were having to come up with new ways to try and bolt these things onto existing non-pod ships because of the extremely limited strategic endurance of tractors - but somehow that's easier than using the non-pod ship's existing decoys and (if wanted) launching defensive dazzelers from it's own tubes?

Sorry I see it as far more complicated and far too Rube Goldberg to be a optimal solution to even your thought of wanting use less than the best defensive ECM.

Jonathan_S wrote:Most of the engineering stuff I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on whether it'll all fit, so I'm not going to rehash it since there's not enough text-ev to resolve it.

I can live with that. As I said repeatedly, it's just engineering.

Basically this seems like a lot of unneeded complexity.
For that matter if you wnat to use dazzlers defensively what's the advantage of cramming them into the same platform as the decoy? Why not go for the same end using existing pods filled with dazzlers (that could be towed during the tactical fight by tractor until needed) plus standard ghost rider decoys?

The advantage is, you can send the decoy way forward of your ship/s and you can improve their effectiveness with the onboard Dazzlers.
As for having pods dedicated for defensive use Dazzlers, wouldn't it constitute the same tactical complexity you are complaining about without having the additional capability of attracting the blinded missiles to waste themselves on an imaginary target? Besides, filling up a pod's worth of dazzlers means you have to fire off all those missiles or lose the unused ones when the pod gets proximity killed.
With half pods, you can decide to make some of the pods launch Dazzlers and the others to go silent running while those without missiles anymore are trying to suicide by being the best target in the area.

On the one hand, given how badly the effective range of Apollo or even Mk16 MDMs outmatches the Cataphract, it's unlikely that most combat would involve the GA forces taking effective missile fire in the first place.

The SLN now knows about MDMs. They have working models that have multiple drives (a CM drive for the sprint phase but still a missile with multiple drives). It's just a matter of applying the technology and know-how of a thousand rich and advanced planets to get a working model of MDMs for the SLN in a year or so. That means, range-wise, the smaller GA ships will not have that huge an advantage. What the SLN doesn't have yet is the better targeting systems at long range.
Just like at the start of the MDM combat for Haven and Manticore, you have a huge initial salvo from towed pods and then the surviving combatants start throwing missiles from their tubes. With the use of these half pods, smaller GA ships will have a better chance of surviving that initial salvo from the SLN.

Wait, tube or boat bay launched drones (the current ghost ride decoys) are "only for your pod combatants" but free flying swarms of half-ish pod sized drone-decoys are are easily usable by everyone?

Ships carry limited number of boat bay launched drones. Smaller ships carry a lot less. I don't know how big the Ghost Rider missile drones are, the Elric picket were launching them from the SD tubes so if they are that big, then there is no chance for heavy cruisers or lighter combatants to use them other than from pods.
You can tow a pod full of GR missile drones but again, you'll have to use all 10 or risk losing them from proximity kills.

You were having to come up with new ways to try and bolt these things onto existing non-pod ships because of the extremely limited strategic endurance of tractors - but somehow that's easier than using the non-pod ship's existing decoys and (if wanted) launching defensive dazzelers from it's own tubes?

Sorry I see it as far more complicated and far too Rube Goldberg to be a optimal solution to even your thought of wanting use less than the best defensive ECM.

Why use up tube space to launch Dazzlers when you can use it to launch ship killers? You got a defensive pod, place it in an area you want to be defended and let the drone AI handle that sector's long range defense. I sincerely doubt you'll need control links for the defensive pod-launched Dazzlers. If I'm going to design that thing, I'd load it with a couple of options/patterns and again, let the drone AI handle it (i.e. blind attacking missiles in sector A using pattern X in 15 seconds... etc). That's it.

Rakhmamort wrote:
The advantage is, you can send the decoy way forward of your ship/s and you can improve their effectiveness with the onboard Dazzlers.

That's not an advantage, even missiles know (more or less) where your ships are.... if you suddenly turn your wedges off, because your decoys that are say only 2 or 3 million km ahead of you are finally in position, then missiles are simply going to IGNORE the decoys because they have enough processing power to know ships can't suddenly move 2 or 3 million km from where they should be. That's part of the reason decoys were kept on tethers, not just because of power issues but because there literally was no point to putting a decoy more than a couple hundred km away. Even the full up Ghost Rider derived Lorelei decoy's were at best a wedge width or two away, that's pathetically close compared to chucking decoys somewhere downrange.

Rakhmamort wrote:As for having pods dedicated for defensive use Dazzlers, wouldn't it constitute the same tactical complexity you are complaining about without having the additional capability of attracting the blinded missiles to waste themselves on an imaginary target? Besides, filling up a pod's worth of dazzlers means you have to fire off all those missiles or lose the unused ones when the pod gets proximity killed.
With half pods, you can decide to make some of the pods launch Dazzlers and the others to go silent running while those without missiles anymore are trying to suicide by being the best target in the area.

The second any hostile, incoming shipkillers start exploding any of your "silent running" pods just got proximity disabled at best, or outright destroyed. This is the whole point behind "use 'em or lose 'em" mentality that existed both pre-podlayers and that even with podlayers stacking huge salvo's, they still fire well before incoming fire has a chance to detonate first (thus disabling the pods you want to fire).

Rakhmamort wrote:

On the one hand, given how badly the effective range of Apollo or even Mk16 MDMs outmatches the Cataphract, it's unlikely that most combat would involve the GA forces taking effective missile fire in the first place.

The SLN now knows about MDMs. They have working models that have multiple drives (a CM drive for the sprint phase but still a missile with multiple drives). It's just a matter of applying the technology and know-how of a thousand rich and advanced planets to get a working model of MDMs for the SLN in a year or so. That means, range-wise, the smaller GA ships will not have that huge an advantage. What the SLN doesn't have yet is the better targeting systems at long range.
Just like at the start of the MDM combat for Haven and Manticore, you have a huge initial salvo from towed pods and then the surviving combatants start throwing missiles from their tubes. With the use of these half pods, smaller GA ships will have a better chance of surviving that initial salvo from the SLN.

Despite the numerous quotes from Hamish Alexander, Admiral Caparelli, Admiral Givens, and even the SLN's ONI paranoic in chief Daud al-Fanudahi outright stating (paraphrased because I really don't feel like digging up every single quote they've made) "for the next 3 to 5 T-years, we[Manticore] would run wild and nothing the Sollies can do would stop us". Bolded the key part there, and in case you seem to be mistaken about exactly what a T-year is, it's a standard Earth year, 3 to 5 of them to be exact. Over 1000 Earth days, or if you want to get that technical, 26000+ hours even if the Solly scientists worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week before the SLN could even think about laying down new missile lines of their own.

Rakhmamort wrote:

Wait, tube or boat bay launched drones (the current ghost ride decoys) are "only for your pod combatants" but free flying swarms of half-ish pod sized drone-decoys are are easily usable by everyone?

Ships carry limited number of boat bay launched drones. Smaller ships carry a lot less. I don't know how big the Ghost Rider missile drones are, the Elric picket were launching them from the SD tubes so if they are that big, then there is no chance for heavy cruisers or lighter combatants to use them other than from pods.
You can tow a pod full of GR missile drones but again, you'll have to use all 10 or risk losing them from proximity kills.

even Ghost Rider [strikethrough]drones[/strikethrough] decoys that are so big they can be launched from SD internal launchers, can still be pushed out from a destroyers boat bays. They won't be bigger than pinnaces, so you could stack a bunch of them and use the big, exo-suit tractor/pressor equipped powersuits and get them launched in plenty of time to get a shell out before you actually need them. And actually what they were launching out of the SD tubes at Elric were full up decoys, Ghost Rider drones are the scouts, and one was deployed in Monica by a single work team aboard the freighter Terekhov borrowed and deployed in short order.

Rakhmamort wrote:

You were having to come up with new ways to try and bolt these things onto existing non-pod ships because of the extremely limited strategic endurance of tractors - but somehow that's easier than using the non-pod ship's existing decoys and (if wanted) launching defensive dazzelers from it's own tubes?

Sorry I see it as far more complicated and far too Rube Goldberg to be a optimal solution to even your thought of wanting use less than the best defensive ECM.

Why use up tube space to launch Dazzlers when you can use it to launch ship killers? You got a defensive pod, place it in an area you want to be defended and let the drone AI handle that sector's long range defense. I sincerely doubt you'll need control links for the defensive pod-launched Dazzlers. If I'm going to design that thing, I'd load it with a couple of options/patterns and again, let the drone AI handle it (i.e. blind attacking missiles in sector A using pattern X in 15 seconds... etc). That's it.

You have it rather backwards, why use pods to launch Dazzlers, when pods already fire generally larger missiles than most ships can possibly launch internally. The smallest pods that Manticore deploys, fire Mk 16's, which are if memory serves cruiser weight missiles. Too large for pre-Rolands to fire, and Roland's can only carry a maximum of 240 of them. But with flatpack pods, a Roland could then bring something like 1000 Mk 16's to a fight, and reserve its internal missiels for later in a fight. And if you start launching full up Manticoran capital grade MDM's, you're now firing the largest and most powerful shipkillers in known space, and doing it from any size ship to boot.

If it's a one vs one ship duel, smaller ships actually start having the defensive advantage of being able to roll ship far more effectively. This was proven even during the Battle of Blackbird, when then-Commander Theisman took a mostly missile armed destroyer into energy range of two cruisers and a destroyer and still performed a stunning attack by constantly rolling ship to absorb incoming fire on his wedge before rolling down to return fire. With current Manticoran/Grayson doctrine giving smaller ships upsized energy weapons, they also have the firepower to beat larger ships more powerful sidewalls, so a destroyer now isn't helpless in energy range with even a heavy cruiser. Light cruiser's can now sneer at battleships, and god help the poor superdreadnought that thinks it can take on a Haven Sector battlecruiser...


Any podlayer that stuffs these in also has to worry about how much ammo they'd give up for, at best, a mediocre defense increase at a time they're already more strapped for ammo than non-podlayers. A BCP can run through her pods in what, 15 minutes, while a Nike has enough for I think it was an hour of steady firing. I'll grant you a Nike is 1.4x larger than a Agamemnon (which carries 330 pods normally), so a direct size increase would give a newer BCP 462 pods (divide by 4 for a single pattern gives us 115 patterns) which would take a maximum of 1386 seconds to deploy all of them, 23 minutes worth of fighting. The second you put more than one layer of your defensive pods in, you've sacrificed more offensively than you'd gain defensively and you'd have to put more than one layer in because the first incoming hostile salvo would proximity mission kill any defense pods you dont use but deployed simply to clear the way for your shipkiller pods.