Git your pencils out and design me a ship!

Weird Harold wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:It is a customs patrol ship. What are you going to use missiles for? If you need missiles you can tow a missile pod or 20.

Warning shots for ships out of range of your energy weapons that won't heave to for inspection?

precisely this. Customs and patrol need at best ONE laser, if they're so deep in the sh!t, they need a BC or larger laser, they're dead already and even having multiple SD grasers isn't going to save them.


A "proper" customs patrol boat would merely be an upsized pinnace, which if you remember have a specific function of being able to assault ships that are underway and forcibly boarding troops.

So an upsized pinnace turned customs & wormhole patrol ship, would be somewhere around the size of a Katana, have 3 lasers of a 3cm size and 2 missile tubes, all bow-mounted. Beta-squared nodes, and all the other bells and whistles that make Shrikes, Ferrets and Katana's such powerful monsters. That gives you something capable of tremendous acceleration to zip around, can send warning shots and shoot up nodes without catastrophic damage in what you're shooting. Additional firepower may be included, such as a pair of Shrike rotary magazines so you have some shipkillers as a last resort.

It's a customs boat, if you want full anti-shipping then you either use an all up destroyer, or you admit that is overkill and send something that works better 90% of the time.

Somtaaw wrote:precisely this. Customs and patrol need at best ONE laser, if they're so deep in the sh!t, they need a BC or larger laser, they're dead already and even having multiple SD grasers isn't going to save them.


A "proper" customs patrol boat would merely be an upsized pinnace, which if you remember have a specific function of being able to assault ships that are underway and forcibly boarding troops.

So an upsized pinnace turned customs & wormhole patrol ship, would be somewhere around the size of a Katana, have 3 lasers of a 3cm size and 2 missile tubes, all bow-mounted. Beta-squared nodes, and all the other bells and whistles that make Shrikes, Ferrets and Katana's such powerful monsters. That gives you something capable of tremendous acceleration to zip around, can send warning shots and shoot up nodes without catastrophic damage in what you're shooting. Additional firepower may be included, such as a pair of Shrike rotary magazines so you have some shipkillers as a last resort.

It's a customs boat, if you want full anti-shipping then you either use an all up destroyer, or you admit that is overkill and send something that works better 90% of the time.

If your customs boat has reached the size of a Katana, it's gone way beyond a pinnace. The original Shrikes came with a stern hangar containing a single cutter and could serve as customs ships in a pinch.

I imagine a purposely designed LAC-sized customs ship would carry at least two cutters. Downsize the graser to a cruiser or destroyer sized beam, retain either a Shrike or Ferret style missile loadout. It doesn't matter which, since a customs boat isn't going to be firing that many missiles - one warning shot and then a disabling shot per engagement, usually. If it needs more than that, then it's in deep trouble and should be running away.

Weird Harold wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:It is a customs patrol ship. What are you going to use missiles for? If you need missiles you can tow a missile pod or 20.

Warning shots for ships out of range of your energy weapons that won't heave to for inspection?

Actually, it is a system defense craft. The vipers would be used against pirates and other frigates, the Mk-16's would be used against bigger warships.

In saltash 120 Mk-16's vaporized indefatigable BC's. 80 Mk-16's should mission kill them.

even 2 defender LAC's and 40 Mk-16's should heavily damge a BC enough that the LAC's should be able to get within Grazer range to finish them off.

darrell wrote:Actually, it is a system defense craft.

The post you replied to was regarding Skimpy's latest "brainchild." His energy only design is a strictly customs craft.

darrell wrote:The vipers would be used against pirates and other frigates, the Mk-16's would be used against bigger warships.

Vipers would work against some pirates, but I doubt they'd be enough for frigates and larger.

You still run into the problem of needing something Roland or light cruiser sized to mount MK-16s. (Or TARDIS-Tech.)

munroburton wrote:If your customs boat has reached the size of a Katana, it's gone way beyond a pinnace. The original Shrikes came with a stern hangar containing a single cutter and could serve as customs ships in a pinch.

I imagine a purposely designed LAC-sized customs ship would carry at least two cutters. Downsize the graser to a cruiser or destroyer sized beam, retain either a Shrike or Ferret style missile loadout. It doesn't matter which, since a customs boat isn't going to be firing that many missiles - one warning shot and then a disabling shot per engagement, usually. If it needs more than that, then it's in deep trouble and should be running away.

You'd have to be damn near LAC sized, because of life support. Pinnaces don't have enough to last even 3 days, we know this because during Field of Dishonor, McKeon and Cardones couldn't get from Manticore Orbit to Gryphon to hotdrop their Marines on Summervale. And that was with only one platoon per pinnace.


So you're going to need to at least double a pinnace in size just to fit life support, and your platoon of Marines which is 2 squads, or 3? Plus naval ratings for all the inspection parties (otherwise you're not really a customs boat)

And if you're actually going to fire warning missiles, you'll need more than just a few missiles otherwise you have no endurance on station. This is also assuming you're using these patrol boats in and around the hyperlimit, not just immediately around a wormhole or space station. If you're just doing customs around space stations and wormholes, pinnaces are all you need.

A Katana in size for a long-endurance customs boat is probably a bit too much, but better a slightly overly large sublight customs "shuttle" than too small.

Weird Harold wrote:

darrell wrote:Actually, it is a system defense craft.

The post you replied to was regarding Skimpy's latest "brainchild." His energy only design is a strictly customs craft.

darrell wrote:The vipers would be used against pirates and other frigates, the Mk-16's would be used against bigger warships.

Vipers would work against some pirates, but I doubt they'd be enough for frigates and larger.

You still run into the problem of needing something Roland or light cruiser sized to mount MK-16s. (Or TARDIS-Tech.)

no, skimper was replying to my LAC design.

4 each 5 round revolver magazines carrying Mk-16 DDM's, A BC grazer, viper missile tubes, fusion plant, in the 30K-40K ton range.

The vipers will work against some pirates, other pirates will be taken care of by the Mk-16's and grasers. 2-4 LAC's should be able to take out a BC.

Somtaaw wrote:You'd have to be damn near LAC sized, because of life support. Pinnaces don't have enough to last even 3 days, we know this because during Field of Dishonor, McKeon and Cardones couldn't get from Manticore Orbit to Gryphon to hotdrop their Marines on Summervale. And that was with only one platoon per pinnace.

That was with full troop loads.

Field of Dishonor wrote:Unfortunately, they couldn't get to Gryphon from Hephaestus. The components of the Manticore Binary System were just past periastron, but the G0 and G2 companion stars were still almost eleven light-hours apart. Nike's pinnaces would have required two and a half Manticoran days to make the trip, which was twice their maximum life-support endurance with full troop loads.

And a full load for a pinnace is, IIRC, a full platoon.
If you dropped to reasonable sized load for customs (maybe one squad) you'd have life support for days.

But honestly, a pinnace can get anywhere within the hyper limit of one solar system in less than that - you wouldn't need them floating out on patrol in deep space for customs inspection. You could probably keep them docked at a station until an inbound freighter was spotted then zip out to inspect it. (Cause it's not like a freighter is going to pop out of hyper anywhere near you unless it's planning to stop in your system (or use a wormhole terminus then). So you don't really need the ability to hang out where you could run down a passing freighter for a customs inspection - they're pretty much coming straight to you.


For system defense you want significantly longer endurance because you might want to picket or patrol parts of the hyper limit to discourage pirates or provide safe transit zones for freighters. But for customs work, it seems to me, you've got plenty of time to send an inspection team out to meet the ship long for an inspection long before they reached their stop within your system.

darrell wrote:no, skimper was replying to my LAC design.

Skimpy hasn't commented on your design, he was replying to my comment about why his energy only customs boat would need missiles.

darrell wrote:4 each 5 round revolver magazines carrying Mk-16 DDM's, A BC grazer, viper missile tubes, fusion plant, in the 30K-40K ton range.

You're ignoring that MK-16s won't fit in a revolver because they're fusion-powered and peripherals to spin up MK16s had to be reduced by 2/3 just to fit six tubes in each hammerhead of a Roland. You're proposing at least four full sets of peripherals in a ship one-fourth the size of what is explicitly stated in several places as, "the smallest ship that could mount Mk16 DDM missiles."

darrell wrote:The vipers will work against some pirates, other pirates will be taken care of by the Mk-16's and grasers. 2-4 LAC's should be able to take out a BC.

Except you're NOT going to mount four Mk16 launchers in a ship the size you're proposing without TARDIS-tech.

For the proverbial all around "system's defense LAC", SLN DD and cruiser whacker, how about we finally get RFC to allow... racked pods. Seems to me that if a 282-LAC can tow two even with the big acceleration degrade, then newer LACs with the fission piles ought to be able to just go for the proverbial power cord and fire up the missile reactors and drop them off before they bring up their battle sidewalls. Likely keeping higher accel than the HoE generation boats as well.

By my count that's 28 DDms, with probably 24 shipkillers? Per LAC, not counting whatever they've got on board, depending on LAC type. Not sure they'd have the needed fire control without rotating controls, but... we're not going up against Haven here. Wouldn't that be a fine surprise for FF to run into...

"we can take them Captain, all they've got is half a dozen LACs..."

Ka-boom.

Weird Harold wrote:

darrell wrote:no, skimper was replying to my LAC design.

Skimpy hasn't commented on your design, he was replying to my comment about why his energy only customs boat would need missiles.

darrell wrote:4 each 5 round revolver magazines carrying Mk-16 DDM's, A BC grazer, viper missile tubes, fusion plant, in the 30K-40K ton range.

You're ignoring that MK-16s won't fit in a revolver because they're fusion-powered and peripherals to spin up MK16s had to be reduced by 2/3 just to fit six tubes in each hammerhead of a Roland. You're proposing at least four full sets of peripherals in a ship one-fourth the size of what is explicitly stated in several places as, "the smallest ship that could mount Mk16 DDM missiles."

darrell wrote:The vipers will work against some pirates, other pirates will be taken care of by the Mk-16's and grasers. 2-4 LAC's should be able to take out a BC.

Except you're NOT going to mount four Mk16 launchers in a ship the size you're proposing without TARDIS-tech.

how do you KNOW that Mk 16's won't work in an appropriately sized revolver launching tubes. The Mk-16 is physically bigger than a SDM which is the main reason that DDM's require an entire new launcher. The shared support equipment can also be used in a LAC, it isn't a case that only the roland can use it.

Oh, those many centuries ago RFC said that nothing smaller than the Saganimi C was big enough to mount the Mk-16's the up popped the roland. Nothing that I know of would prevent the same thing from occuring again, and nothing I am aware of says that it isn't possible.