Defensive pods

Jonathan_S wrote:Hmm, I'd guess that Nike's launchers for Mk16s have the same cycle time as the Hexapuma's launcher for Mk16s - and SoS gave the time for those as 18 seconds.

Isn't a pod layer closer to 10 seconds per salvo? Combine that with the 12% large salvo (56 missiles vs 50) and the BC(P) appears to be burning through ammo somewhere between 83% - 100% faster than the BC(L) - which I wouldn't have guessed until I went back and crunched some numbers.

darrell wrote:it is 12 seconds per pod = 20 pods per minute @ 16 Mk-16 missiles per pod = 320 missiles per minute for the argamemnon. with 330 pods (5280 missiles) it will shoot itself dry in16 minutes at maximum rate of fire.

50 missiles every 18 seconds for the nike = 166 missiles per minute for the nike. with over forty minutes of maximum rate fire that is over 6,700 missiles. The nike also has keyhole 1, SD grasers and SD armor to make it uber survivable.

Somtaaw wrote:Oops, I'd listed the Agamemnons as having 4620 pods total, but that's actually 4620 missiles in total, contained within the 330 pods, each of which is holding the 14 mark 16's.


And the 12 second pattern roll, I think only applied to early podlayers and the Caravan merchant cruisers. I don't think we actually really saw any pattern roll numbers after that, I don't recall seeing any between the Wayfarer and ART.

But even at 12 seconds per pattern, that puts an Agamemnon at still spitting distance between it rolling a pattern of pods, and a Nike spitting out a double broadside that's almost as big (6 missile difference). Which really just reinforces the point that the BCP has quite a glass jaw for little to no real military perks. Grayson seems to disagree, I think they still build their Courvosier-II's while the RMN started really ramping up their Nike count but Grayson's are pretty crazy.

Courvosier-II's ... I don't remember how much we actually know about what their capabilities are.

A BC(P) can use pods loaded with full-up MDMs, which means they can (briefly) supplement Apollo fire from SD(P)s. Or flatten opposing capital ships on their own.

BC(P)s are a good short-term supplement to SD(P)s and to not being able to build equal numbers of SD(P)s.
No BC has a realistic chance against an SD(P). The BC(P) is probably only marginally less survivable relative to the BC against an SD(P), but can more easily pack a heavier punch. That is, if you have a squadron of SD(P)s inbound, the squadron of BC(P)s will do more damage while they last than a squadron of regular BCs.

Also, the BC(P) can triple stack a salvo - 168 Mark 16s - in the time it takes a BC(L) to double stack its salvos 100 Mark 16s.

The BC(P) is a short-duration, high-intensity combatant. In combat, one of two things will happen, either it shoots itself dry or nearly so taking out the enemy, or one side or the other was screwed anyways.


Plus, I'd wager on a BC(P) against a SLN SD any day.

Kytheros wrote:A BC(P) can use pods loaded with full-up MDMs, which means they can (briefly) supplement Apollo fire from SD(P)s. Or flatten opposing capital ships on their own.

BC(P)s are a good short-term supplement to SD(P)s and to not being able to build equal numbers of SD(P)s.
No BC has a realistic chance against an SD(P). The BC(P) is probably only marginally less survivable relative to the BC against an SD(P), but can more easily pack a heavier punch. That is, if you have a squadron of SD(P)s inbound, the squadron of BC(P)s will do more damage while they last than a squadron of regular BCs.

Also, the BC(P) can triple stack a salvo - 168 Mark 16s - in the time it takes a BC(L) to double stack its salvos 100 Mark 16s.

The BC(P) is a short-duration, high-intensity combatant. In combat, one of two things will happen, either it shoots itself dry or nearly so taking out the enemy, or one side or the other was screwed anyways.


Plus, I'd wager on a BC(P) against a SLN SD any day.

Well sure. But I'd back a Sag-C against a current refit Scientist. The tech imbalance is just too extreme.

But it seems to me that a short high endurance combat is more a side effect than a design goal of the BC(P). When originally designed, when MDMs were big capacitor powered things it was probably impractical to build something as big as MDM launchers into a sub-2 Mton BC. Pods were probably the only reasonable method to squeeze longer ranged missiles into BCs. And those would be necessary unless you wanted to totally abandon the system raid mission (where you need to be able to counter-fire against system defense MDM pods.
Once the breakthroughs gave you Mk16s you could get that range is a much smaller package; one that could be squeezed into a conventional broadside format.

Kytheros wrote:Tell me, why would someone spend time and resources to design, work out doctrine for, and build these things, when they have higher priorities for their time and resources?
Like, say, expanding industrial infrastructure. Designing the next generation of warships. Doing R&D work on the next generation of tech upgrades.

Because if you stop finding new ways to use what you have, then you are wasting a lot of potential for all the technologies you'll ever discover/produce.

Take note that when Honor's team were using captured PN ships, they realized that the hardware wasn't all that bad? The PN could have dealt bigger damage to RMN if they were able to use all the capabilities of what they had instead of only using some of them.

Jonathan_S wrote:]Well sure. But I'd back a Sag-C against a current refit Scientist. The tech imbalance is just too extreme.

Nah, give a scientist the ability to control 120 missiles and a few hundred Mk23 pods. I'd bet on the side with SD armor, not the side that will get hit with 1200 capital ship missiles.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:]Well sure. But I'd back a Sag-C against a current refit Scientist. The tech imbalance is just too extreme.

Nah, give a scientist the ability to control 120 missiles ...

But that wouldn't be a "current refit Scientist."

I'm also not all that sure what a "current refit Scientist" mounts as armor would count as "SD armor" in the Haven sector. The SLN mau call them SDs, but the RMN or RHN would call them DNs; and not very good DNs at that.

Fire control is the easiest thing to refit. It's all surface mount radio arrays and computers. No need to cut up armor, etc. roughly comparable are pdlcs, again they don't require cutting up the armor as they are outside it and just require power and dats.

Jonathan_S wrote:That's not how I read the quote from ART.
Yes it talks about creating a complete false squadron of ships-of-the-wall -- but it also says it took 1/3 of the deployed Lorelei drones to do so. That doesn't sound, to me, like they're projecting multiple targets each.

Also since is says the false targets Loreleis can generate are "still far weaker than those of genuine superdreadnoughts" I doubt they'd want to further reduce their power (and hence believably) by diluting that limited power across multiple images.

Start with the part "Conceptually, Lorelei is light-years beyond Halo.". After that paragraph, the capabilities of Halo was described starting with "Halo provided false targets to confuse incoming missile". If Halo was producing multiple targets and Lorelei was light-years ahead of Halo, then I'm going to claim that Lorelei can produce multiple targets too if not MORE than what Halo can produce.

Actually the kilt is substantially narrower than the throat. See the infodump Wedge geometry. On an SD the throat is 190 km tall, while the kilt is only 40 km tall.

That said, I'm not sure missiles preferentially go for those. Yes, they're laserheads do more damage if not interdicted by sidewalls - but to achieve that they need to get to almost exactly dead ahead or dead astern and be attacking a ship that doesn't have a bow or stern wall up. (Though they can't have full walls up over both). The vulnerable aspect is only 20 km wide (the separation between the sidewalls. And because those sidewalls continue all the way to the fore and aft end of the wedge they stretch something like 150 km past the ends of the SD. So you have a fairly narrow angle to be able to fire between them and hit the ship.

But the downside of attempting that is that (especially when attacking a formation of ships) that the missile has to pass much deeper into the missile defense envelope to achieve the fore or aft position. The defensive probability of kill percentages go way, way, up compared to a missile that detonates as soon as it reaches the 30,000 - 50,000 km standoff range off the near side of the formation.

My mistake then in remembering which aspect was wider. However, you already provided the information why pods are susceptible to proximity kills. Laserheads have a standoff range of 30-50K. That means the area, 30-50K around the ship will be bombarded with plasma from the fusion explosions from the missile warheads.

These pod-drones however are mobile, they can move away from the ship with or without activating the drone capabilities. Far enough away that the plasma from the missile warheards won't affect them. I don't know what distance a pod has to be for it to be unaffected by plasma from a missile warhead but I'm sure the RMN has concrete data on that.

Somtaaw wrote:
The "use'em or lose 'em" doctrine of missile pods has been applied in every single battle pods have been used, and even when they have pod layers. REALLY notable examples would be the Battle of Solon, when Giscard first ambushed Honor, and realized "standard patterns of shipkillers" weren't doing the job. So he stopped firing and started rolling lots and lots of pods... Honor fired back hoping to provoke him into firing early but she wasn't aiming specifically where his pods were. She aimed at his ships. Both sides had podlayers, but they still have the standard doctrine "use'em before hostile fire can possibly get close enough to proxy kill"

And that is due to the fact that despite being launched away from the podnaught, the pods remain within the area of space where the enemy's missiles are going to fill with plasma from the fusion explosions in their warheads.
No screens, no armor means plasma turns the pods in the area into useless lumps of metal or if the plasma breaches the pod's fusion reactor, exploding ball of more plasma.

I'm sure that whatever doctrine will be created, it will be SOP to get the drones away from the area where proximity kills are likely. An energy torpedo has a range of 1 light second and it incorporates a system that keeps the plasma contained. Get the pod-drones half a million or a million kilometers away from the ship and it would most likely be safe from proximity kills.

I'm sorry, by one company do you mean Technodyne Industries of Yildun? Because that's NOT where Cataphracts were actually designed, TIY simply took credit for a Mesan development. The were developed by a Daniel Detweiler, and mentioned in Torch of Freedom

Torch of Freedom, Chapter 58 wrote:Unlike the Solarian League Navy, the Mesan Alignment had no reservations at all about the missile ranges being reported by observers of the renewed conflict between Manticore and the Republic of Haven. They'd not only realized those reports were accurate, but figured out what the Manticorans and Havenites must have done to produce them.

Unfortunately, deducing what someone else had done wasn't the same thing as figuring out how to do it for oneself. Downsizing missile drive components without reducing their already limited lifetimes still further was a significant technological challenge—one the Alignment was working hard to overcome, but hadn't managed to pull off yet.

And also

Mission of Honor, Chapter 29 wrote:Daniel Detweiler's researchers hadn't yet figured out how to fit multiple full-size, sustainable drives into a single missile of manageable dimensions. They had, however, realized what the RMN must have done, and they were working industriously to duplicate the Manticoran advantage. In the meantime, they'd come up with Cataphract, a variant of their own based on taking the standard missile bodies for the SLN's new-generation anti-ship missiles and adding what amounted to a separate final stage carrying a standard laser head and a counter-missile's drive system.

Two very specific passages, from very late in the series that are unlikely to have been retconned, show it was Mesa that designed the only non-Alliance MDM's in existance. The Solarian League still don't even have researchers, except that small quintet that met with al-Fanudahi in an SLN "archive" that are even capable of understanding things have changed.

I'll concede that the SLN has taken the Mesa/TIY Cataphracts and run with the idea, but that's still a far cry from being able to truly compete with GA missiles. They don't understand how to do the podlayers, they don't understand that Alliance LAC's are incredibly deadly even to their obsolete superdreadnought Reserve, they don't understand CLAC's, or FTL-equipped recon drones, or FTL communications period... there's a pretty long list of stuff the SLN doesn't believe is possible until it's thrown in their face, and by that point it's too late.

Those aren't researchers, they are analysts and investigators. Solarian companies were still selling Haven some tech during the time Torch was being birthed. The SL has lots and lots of scientists and they have hundreds of high tech worlds. Their problem is not having those tech maximized for combat.
If Beowulf can easily become the GA's Keyhole II production facility, so can other SL planets. Remember Beowulf's reputation is for MEDICAL tech, not military hardware. If you give the SL scientists the information of what the GA has been able to accomplish, they will be able to duplicate that in a couple of years.

Which is why using not so cutting edge tech would still work. The SLN might be able to throw decent MDMs soon, but their other combat tech won't still be up to par. They won't have pod layers yet so it's back to the time of having one huge initial salvo and then back down to tube launched missiles.
You need to have a way of defending against that huge initial salvo cheaply. Remember that the SL's manufacturing capability is orders above the capability of the GA. Over a thousand advanced planets/systems can bury the GA with pods once the SLN has a working MDM design.
You want your ship to have the time to take out the SLN ships? Then you need to defend it. Cheaply. The SL has far more resources to burn especially if it is fighting for survival.

You're dodging the point, Roland's ALREADY carry Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth, it's part of the standard ammo mix. Your decoys and drones, in pods that are limpeted are going to be powered... how? As kzt's pointed out in numerous other threads, the 'power cord' seems to be mystical technology, so limpeting anything to a ship has a VERY strictly limited lifespan. And the ship still has to carry them around normally when they are going to battlestations and limpeting externally.

Not dodging the point at all. I have listed down a lot of things that you keep trying to ignore.

1) Smaller ships carry few regular sized drones.
2) Smaller ships cannot launch the Ghost Rider missile drones since they are sized for SDs and they probably have shorter endurance.
3) The dazzlers in the defensive pods are short ranged. It doesn't need the MDM based dazzlers in the ship's magazines. Those would be more useful helping the attack birds get through enemy defenses.
4) There has been no written rule how lone one can limpet a pod on the ship's hull. The Andermani had lots of half pods limpeted to their ships before they became RMN's ally vs the PN. Those Andermani ships were in patrol sweeps in Silesia and there was no mention of them being accompanied by ammo ships that might have carried the half pods that were attached to the ships.
5) The GA ships need to survive the soon to be very heavy initial salvos from the SLN forces. Even if their fire control will be bad, if the GA ships get hammered by wild MDMs, they wouldn't be taking the battle to the enemy or if they still can, they would end up in the still non-existent yards in Manticore and Grayson.
6) Ships tubes need to be firing attack salvos. If you use them to launch short lived decoys and dazzlers to help the said decoys, then your offensive salvo size becomes smaller and less likely to get through the enemy defense. You won't need control links for the defensive Dazzlers in the drone-pods, you can set them for individual AI. It's not going to be hard to develop one that can accept a command to detonate at a certain point at a certain time pointed at a certain direction.
7) Building more expensive Lorelei platforms and expending them when they can build less expensive drone alternatives that will work as good as Lorelei against upcoming SLN missiles is wasting resources. They need to rebuild a lot of infrastructure, a lot of ships, a lot of missiles, develop their new planets, offer trade agreements to planets that they will liberate from Frontier Security etc. If they can find ways to cut costs for some items, they will cut those costs.

Given seemingly standard Manticoran ammunition usage, 10% of all missiles they carry will be Dazzlers, and 10% of all missiles will also be Dragon's Teeth. Leaving every ship with ~80% of maximum possible missiles loaded are actual shipkillers. Prior to the boom/burn setting being merged into one missile, the ammo mix would also have been forced to include a few boom missiles for warning shots and similar.

I don't understand the relevance of this part.

Funny, you're the one trying to pass off your decoy & drone loaded pods as magically all-powerful, I'm sorry for pointing out the flaws, but your attempt to deflect the strawman arguments away from your own strawman's is a bit futile.

Huh? All powerful? I have explicitly stated that it would be effective against the SLN's first generation MDMs and fire control for those. I haven't even said anything about a destroyer bringing them to a battle can take out an SD.

The only thing the defensive pods are trying to accomplish is to help defend a ship from very large salvos of missiles. We all know that is the norm now since the re-introduction of pods. With major characters already trying to find ways to defend against that threat level, all I hear is old tech is bad, GA already has Lorelei, cannot be done. RMN's Ghost Rider tech is way way better than what the SLN can field in the near future. Lorelei is cutting edge no question about that but it is also going to be very very expensive. If you can fit 14 Mk 16s in a flat pack, you can fit 4 Mk-16 (Dazzlers) and GR missile drone capability into a half-flat pack.

My arguments for the defensive pods aren't strawman arguments. They are all logical and I haven't seen you show that the premises I've made are fallacies.
Using a situation that doesn't even include the use of the defensive pod as an argument against it is in the region of nonsense. It doesn't even go to the level of passing as a strawman argument, much less an argument.

Then why has the Manticoran Navy actually abandoned podlaying battlecruisers in favor of the Nike-class, if the podlayer is all supreme, by your words?

The RMN has decided the ability to fire large salvo's, in return for being glass cannons is not good doctrine for anything except superdreadnoughts.

...(snip)

Thank you for answering your own question.

If you think before you auto-negate, you'd realize that giving lighter combatants more drones/decoys is actually making them NOT GLASS CANNONS.

I for one will expect the SLN to only go for fights where they will have a huge advantage in numbers. More platforms, more pods, more missiles, huge initial salvo/s. Only 2 or 3 drones per GA ship = more hits (even Lorelei isn't perfect). More hits = no more lighter GA ship.

---
As for saying I claimed pod layers are all supreme, can you quote the part where I said that?

If you have an axe to grind against BC(P)s, then go ahead and have at it. But please don't designate me as a champion of a ship design in a thread where I am talking about a pod-drone hybrid.

Rakhmamort wrote:As for saying I claimed pod layers are all supreme, can you quote the part where I said that?

If you have an axe to grind against BC(P)s, then go ahead and have at it. But please don't designate me as a champion of a ship design in a thread where I am talking about a pod-drone hybrid.

If I have to go quote diving through this whole thread I will, but I'll point out that you're the one absolutely stuck on pods that:
a) fit standard rails, only twice as many as standard pods
b) accept that trading out entire pods of shipkillers for these defense pods is not only a good trade, but should be done for even SDP's
c) don't seem to understand that tractoring pods to the ship gives the pods a week lifespan, based on how long the Mesa/TIY pods were designed to last at Monica, and they don't have all the bells and whistles RMN pods do (so arguably, the RMN pods even with fusion would last less than a week)


By those three points you have been making sir, that means you are indeed advocating podlayers should have these pods. You also have been unwilling to accept that more than just myself, have pointed out these pods are irrelevant.



Page 4:

Rakhmamort wrote:As I said, it's just engineering. I don't know how big the pod's propulsion equipment should be but I believe RC drive modules would be good enough for the defensive pod. The pod does not need to have very high acceleration, just fast enough to get into position and maintain formation with the ship/s it is defending.

You were advocating your "defense" pods, should not only be carrying Dazzlers and decoys, but advocating they should also have their own impellers to keep up with ships on their own.

Maxx from Bu9 addressed that point:

MaxxQ wrote:The pods currently used by the RMN (and even the older pods) all have RCS thrusters. These are required to spread the pods out after being deployed and to align them on the attack axis. However, you state later that you wish for them to be able to maintain stationkeeping with the ship they are to protect, and that brings up other cans of worms. It would definitely need an impeller drive, which requires certain design considerations. These considerations *may* make it difficult to design a pod like you describe that could work with standard pod-launching equipment (as BuNine has defined it).

Also, even half a pod (flatpack) is nearly twice the size of a standard Star Knight/Fearless recon drone (which is the most current drone we have blocked-out at the moment), so these half-pods will absolutely need to be launched from pod bays. As the bays are designed now, this may be difficult to do (note, I said difficult, not impossible) while still maintaining a standard attack missile loadout.

You addressed that point as irrelevant, someone else can make it work on page 5

Rakhmamort wrote:I'm aware of the basic mobility the current pods have but we both agree that it is not enough for what I was proposing.

As for the pod being equipped with impellers and that leading to a design considerations that would end up not working with the standard pod launchers, I leave that to the engineers.

Rakhmamort wrote:As for choosing defense pods over ship killer pods, that, honestly is on the tactical commander's lap. However, I chose the pod (half-pod) lay-out so non-pod-layers can also use them.
Smaller ships that only has a couple of ECM drones in their inventory can supplement them with a couple of half-pods that are tractored/limpeted/towed.

Here you are saying a podlayer can almost magically change loadouts based on what they're about to fight, whenever they want. Based on Shadow of Freedom, the Hexapuma went around a month without the missiles it fired in Nuncio until it got to an ammunition ship.

The only time(s) podlayers might be able to change out their ammo loadouts, would be assigned to large defensive formations (Home Fleets, major shipyards like Grendlesbane, etc), and as such when an enemy comes across the wall with blood in their eye, you're not going to have enough time to nip into a shipyard slip, offload shipkillers and load extra defense pods in an optimal load mix (example, defense pod layer, 3 layers of shipkillers, a defense pod layer or two, more shipkillers, and so on). Hostile fleet is incoming, you're going to move out to engage them, and whatever you happen to have on your rails is on your rails.

Later on in that same page, you ridiculed that light ships would carry many EW drones at all. On Basilisk Station, Honor took a LIGHT CRUISER up against the Sirius, which was later rated at a minimum heavy cruiser, if not battlecruiser, and had upwards of 3 decoys per broadside. Decoys are the same as EW drones, they both serve to lure missiles away from the launch ship.

During Honor Among Enemies, the decoy drones the Wayfarer launched to mimic the Artemis were both huge, and devoured power that they could only last 30 minutes each, this being a time prior to widespread Ghost Rider fusion decoys which would still only last an hour or two, as per evidence in the Battle of Elric circa Ashes of Victory.


Now, by page 6:

Rakhmamort wrote:The defensive pods are half the size of standard pods. You can more easily find places where you can limpet/attach half sized pods onto the hull than full sized pods. The Andermani did that with their cruisers way back before they became allied with the RMN.

Here you are ignoring the power issue of your pods, after saying these pods will have full up Dazzlers which means fusion power but in the same post just prior:

Rakhmamort wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Which works unless the enemy is detected when they attack from ambush. Then you would have your pod rails jammed with defensive pods; which in one respect is nice since you'll spend the first minute or two adding to you defense. But it also means the enemy is free to continue fire at you undistracted.

Why would you stack a hell of a lot of defensive pods which will take you minutes to deploy? The equivalent of the standard 6 MDM pod set out of the rails is 12 half pods, which means you got 12 drones already out. I believe that is more than enough to start off any battle.

Here you are saying they have to be rolled, or should be rolled early, which means their fusion cores are active which gives them an absolute maximum life endurance before they expire, or get proximity killed (another concept you seem to have understanding... it's handwavium plot that irrelevant to the shipkillers attacking anywhere from 50,000 km away attacking the ship, that same nuclear explosion will EMP disable any and all pods even remotely nearby. Plot and author say this is so, so you denying it like you have later in this thread, doesnt change that)



And then my final point for now...

Rakhmamort wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:
I commend the strength of your defense, but these defensive pods are just plain useless to the Grand Alliance, everything they already have is better both offensively and defensively than any known competitor's tech. And said competitor's literally cannot get competing tech in less than 2 years, multiple books have quoted that from Hamish Alexander, to even Daud Al-Fanunandi (or whatever it was again, the ONI paranoic).

And that is exactly the point. The SLN's combat tech is so far behind RMN's that the GA need not be using their most advanced tech at all. High-tech equipment costs a lot. Imagine if you were using Patriots to shoot down stones launched by catapults. Would that be a cost effective defense?

You want these pods to be a "low-tech" defense option for the Grand Alliance to use, without using all their "flashy" technology.

Except let's actually look at how everything gets used:

FTL comms? Ghost Rider.
Hermes buoys? Ghost Rider.
Dazzler? Ghost Rider.
Lorelei? Ghost Rider.
Decoys prior to Lorelei? Ghost Rider.
MDMs? Only possible because Ghost Rider was responsible for the next generation of high density capacitors and later fusion cores.
Missile pods? initially not a Ghost Rider spawned technology, but nowdays RMN pods are so full of Ghost Rider tech, we can safely call them Ghost Rider pods.


I'm having immense trouble understanding how these pods are supposed to avoid throwing it in the League, or MAlign's face how good RMN tech is, when it's all from Ghost Rider, and whether you're using a Dazzler mounted on a fusion 1 drive missile, or a fusion 4 drive system defense missile, a Dazzler is still a Dazzler, a decoy is a decoy, and MDM's are MDM's.


I'm only upto page 6 of proof here starting from page 4 after we clarified what exactly this idea was supposed to be. To paraphrase Reverend Sullivan "would you care to guess how much more proof I can find, I almost guarantee your guess will be low"

4) There has been no written rule how lone one can limpet a pod on the ship's hull. The Andermani had lots of half pods limpeted to their ships before they became RMN's ally vs the PN. Those Andermani ships were in patrol sweeps in Silesia and there was no mention of them being accompanied by ammo ships that might have carried the half pods that were attached to the ships.

The Andermani physically bolted the things to their hulls. They weren't limpeted in the sense that David uses it, which is with tractors.

As for how long Manticore's missile pods can tractor themselves, here's part of an old, unarchived post from the Bar:

And, no, you can't use the tractor-equipped flat packs to stick one pod on top of another for any lengthy period of time. While it's true that the pods have onboard fusion plants, it's also true that those plants aren't designed to run forever. A day or two, sure, no real problem -- maybe even a little longer. Beyond that, though, things start getting dicey, because the plants themselves have a limited designs service life. It's not just a case of whether or not they have enough fuel; it's a case of trade-offs in the design which were made in order to downsize and lighten the plants themselves. For just about any practical tactical purpose, they have plenty of endurance; for routinely cruising with the plants turned on to power the pods' tractors, no.