Long range Vipers

Given the missile spreadsheets one begins to wonder if a 50% power Viper would have 16+ million KM range at 65,000 G acceleration it could be a great offensive small ship missile option.

Now One knows that RFC doesn't allow for CM at half power, But then the Viper isn't just a CM and perhaps as a Long Range Viper it just wouldn't work as a CM; Wedge to weak perhaps. But that doesn't matter if it is firing its Laser head. Weaker than any other missile but with a longer range than anything other than ERM or DDM. And in the case of the smallest Cataphract, similar in many aspects.

With doubled Ammo supplies for the CM tubes a Small ship or LAC can add needed range and salvo size. The Wolfhound would not just be firing its LERM missiles but add and double or triple its Salvo size.

Lord Skimper wrote:Given the missile spreadsheets one begins to wonder if a 50% power Viper would have 16+ million KM range at 65,000 G acceleration it could be a great offensive small ship missile option.

Now One knows that RFC doesn't allow for CM at half power, But then the Viper isn't just a CM and perhaps as a Long Range Viper it just wouldn't work as a CM; Wedge to weak perhaps. But that doesn't matter if it is firing its Laser head. Weaker than any other missile but with a longer range than anything other than ERM or DDM.

A Viper uses a CM drive, with CM drive nodes. And since (as you noted) RFC says CM missile nodes always have --- and still do --- burn out much more quickly than attack missile nodes built by the same technology, however, and the overpowered nature of their wedges mean that they can't be "stepped down" for extra endurance.. So I have no reason to suspect that the overpowered nodes used in a Viper could be stepped down.

If the Manties could build a missile drive node, of any type, capable of 65,000g for 225 s that would give a 16.1 million km range.


But heck, if they could do so for even 180 seconds that would allow MDMs with nearly 30% better performance. The fact we haven't seen such super MDMs (yet) is the best indirect evidence that their tech can't yet pull off what you're looking for.

Don't SLN CM offer a Half rate stepped down power?

I just figured the stepped down drive nodes work they just don't work as counter missiles.

Lord Skimper wrote:Don't SLN CM offer a Half rate stepped down power?

I just figured the stepped down drive nodes work they just don't work as counter missiles.

Nope, not that we've ever seen. The 2nd stage on the Cataphract, which is derived from SLN CM tech, has an extra 15 seconds of burn time (like the Mk31 CM/Viper do) - so they last 75 seconds instead of the normal 60.

But that breakthrough was not achieved by providing a lower accel mode. They still (as far as we know) only have a single power setting - and their acceleration appears to match that of their 60s flight time predecessors.

(Though that doesn't explain why the SLN CM has such crappy performance compared to their shipkillers)


For example in ART it says "the maximum powered endurance of Solarian counter-missiles was just under 1.8 million kilo-meters"; which maps out well to 98,000 g for 60s. AKA the accel of the Cataphract 2nd stage but for nly the normal duration.
Similarly WoH says "The latest generation Manticoran counter missiles had increased their effective intercept range to just over two million kilometers" talking about the CMs used at Sidemore (later apparently designated the Mk30); which maps out well to 130,000 g for 60s. AKA the accel of the Mk31/Viper but for only the normal duration.

Johnathon, I thought the poor performance of their CM's was actually the poor performance of their Command and Control links.

jdtinIA wrote:Johnathon, I thought the poor performance of their CM's was actually the poor performance of their Command and Control links.

The command and control links suck, the cycle time on their launchers is pitiful, but their CM drives aren't so hot (relative to their shipkillers) either.

Around the start of the war with Haven Manticore's missiles were (only giving full power settings for shipkillers):
85,000 gees shipkiller
90,500 gees CM = 106% the acceleration; 4,500 more gees

By the end of the ceasefire their best were more like
96,000 gees shipkiller (oddly the Mk23 appears to have reverted to 92,000 gees; but I used the bigger number to reduce the blowout in performance improvement to the CM)
130,000 gees CM = 135% the acceleration; 34,000 more gees

But the SLN's current ones appear to be:
95,200 gees shipkiller
98,000 gees CM = 103% the acceleration; 2,800 more gees

Basically the SLN has a quite good shipkiller acceleration, but a surprisingly marginal performance increase over it with their CM. (That said, based on some other stuff their CM still seems to outrange what Haven had as of 1920 PD. So it's not actually that bad on an absolute basis - just a surprisingly mediocre improvement over their other drive)

Jonathan_S wrote:Around the start of the war with Haven Manticore's missiles were (only giving full power settings for shipkillers):
85,000 gees shipkiller
90,500 gees CM = 106% the acceleration; 4,500 more gees

By the end of the ceasefire their best were more like
96,000 gees shipkiller (oddly the Mk23 appears to have reverted to 92,000 gees; but I used the bigger number to reduce the blowout in performance improvement to the CM)
130,000 gees CM = 135% the acceleration; 34,000 more gees

But the SLN's current ones appear to be:
95,200 gees shipkiller
98,000 gees CM = 103% the acceleration; 2,800 more gees

Basically the SLN has a quite good shipkiller acceleration, but a surprisingly marginal performance increase over it with their CM. (That said, based on some other stuff their CM still seems to outrange what Haven had as of 1920 PD. So it's not actually that bad on an absolute basis - just a surprisingly mediocre improvement over their other drive)

CM drives aren't going to be a separate technology per se - as noted, they're essentially the same gravetic drive everything else uses, but with a designed-in overload-and-burn-out (like a missile only more so)

Maybe the SLN counter-missiles are design for a different advantage - I'd doubt mass-production (because the SLN didn't see missile warfare as that important) but maybe cost, maybe compactness, or maybe endurance. If the SLN countermissiles have always been designed with a longer 'burn' time, that might have a practical value - yes, they're less useful when engaging capable (in ECM/defensive sprint terms) missiles but maybe more useful in engaging 'dumb' missiles with good raw acceleration (some SLN or lower tech bases' system defence stuff).

Whilst newer SLN tech is generally found on Frontier Fleet, SLN tech development & the bulk of the budget goes to Battle Fleet. And Battle Fleet's job (as it saw it) was to go to a system that had Been Irksome, park themselves in orbit, and politely explain that there has Been A Change Of Management. Which means that (since few people they dealt with had a serious 'fleet in being' which could threaten superdreadnoughts, the most likely thing to cause a threat to an SLN capital vessel would be emplaced system-defence missiles.

Just a thought. Don't know if the maths supports the idea.

locarno24 wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Around the start of the war with Haven Manticore's missiles were (only giving full power settings for shipkillers):
85,000 gees shipkiller
90,500 gees CM = 106% the acceleration; 4,500 more gees

By the end of the ceasefire their best were more like
96,000 gees shipkiller (oddly the Mk23 appears to have reverted to 92,000 gees; but I used the bigger number to reduce the blowout in performance improvement to the CM)
130,000 gees CM = 135% the acceleration; 34,000 more gees

But the SLN's current ones appear to be:
95,200 gees shipkiller
98,000 gees CM = 103% the acceleration; 2,800 more gees

Basically the SLN has a quite good shipkiller acceleration, but a surprisingly marginal performance increase over it with their CM. (That said, based on some other stuff their CM still seems to outrange what Haven had as of 1920 PD. So it's not actually that bad on an absolute basis - just a surprisingly mediocre improvement over their other drive)

CM drives aren't going to be a separate technology per se - as noted, they're essentially the same gravetic drive everything else uses, but with a designed-in overload-and-burn-out (like a missile only more so)

Maybe the SLN counter-missiles are design for a different advantage - I'd doubt mass-production (because the SLN didn't see missile warfare as that important) but maybe cost, maybe compactness, or maybe endurance. If the SLN countermissiles have always been designed with a longer 'burn' time, that might have a practical value - yes, they're less useful when engaging capable (in ECM/defensive sprint terms) missiles but maybe more useful in engaging 'dumb' missiles with good raw acceleration (some SLN or lower tech bases' system defence stuff).

Could be. Certainly the Cataphract 2nd stage has a longer 'burn' time (75s, like the new RMN Mk31 CMs rather than the 60s everyone else seems to have). The only place I could find that gave a SLN CM range was during one of the simulator sequences. The text said "the maximum powered endurance of Solarian counter-missiles was just under 1.8 million kilo-meters" however that can't be trusted as an ominient narrator since it's really describing the simulated CMs - and obviously their profile is no better than the Manticoran naval intelligence's knowledge.

So yes, the stated range maps to a 60s run at their actual accel (since a 75 second run would give them 2.7 million km) but Naval Intel might not have been aware if they had an extended run time...


(Also, not that it affects much, I should have quoted the CA Fearless's CMs - 92,000 gees rather than CL Fearless's at 90,500 gees in my example. Ah well)

One shouldn't forget that the Cataphract is not _SLN_ technology. It's probably Technodyne tech, with possibly some input from Alignment engineers who've been working on cracking the MDM problem. Admittedly it's not actually clear who developed it - for that matter the exact nature of the ties between Technodyne and the Alignment is, to put it mildly, obscure - but Technodyne was working its way down the ERM pathway, and the 2nd stage Cataphract is an application of that. That puts the tech head and shoulders above anything the SLN has in general deployment, so discrepancies are to be expected.

Come to think of it, it's not too clear how much the SLN knows, even now, about them. I don't think that the putative senders of the info Filareta was given knew a thing about those messages. To the extent the SLN knows about Cataphracts, they must be being presented as something just off Technodyne's back burner.

Jonathan_S wrote:

locarno24 wrote:
CM drives aren't going to be a separate technology per se - as noted, they're essentially the same gravetic drive everything else uses, but with a designed-in overload-and-burn-out (like a missile only more so)

Maybe the SLN counter-missiles are design for a different advantage - I'd doubt mass-production (because the SLN didn't see missile warfare as that important) but maybe cost, maybe compactness, or maybe endurance. If the SLN countermissiles have always been designed with a longer 'burn' time, that might have a practical value - yes, they're less useful when engaging capable (in ECM/defensive sprint terms) missiles but maybe more useful in engaging 'dumb' missiles with good raw acceleration (some SLN or lower tech bases' system defence stuff).

Could be. Certainly the Cataphract 2nd stage has a longer 'burn' time (75s, like the new RMN Mk31 CMs rather than the 60s everyone else seems to have). The only place I could find that gave a SLN CM range was during one of the simulator sequences. The text said "the maximum powered endurance of Solarian counter-missiles was just under 1.8 million kilo-meters" however that can't be trusted as an ominient narrator since it's really describing the simulated CMs - and obviously their profile is no better than the Manticoran naval intelligence's knowledge.

So yes, the stated range maps to a 60s run at their actual accel (since a 75 second run would give them 2.7 million km) but Naval Intel might not have been aware if they had an extended run time...


(Also, not that it affects much, I should have quoted the CA Fearless's CMs - 92,000 gees rather than CL Fearless's at 90,500 gees in my example. Ah well)

got all excited thinking somebody was referencing colonial vipers.