Git your pencils out and design me a ship!

Why is anyone placing Keyholes on light ships? They already have self motivating platforms that can communicate. Can communicate via light speed coms and FTL over VERY long distances measured in light minutes... They also have scanning sensors to give a clear picture of what is where and who is what. It is merely a matter of bandwidth.

What is more useful? An extra 20 RD's, or a single keyhole? I'll take an extra side helping of RD's please. Oh, and a few more RD's please.

CM's effectively require no bandwidth. They need a vector to follow and coordinates of incoming. Beyond that? Zilch. Even if you guys wish to limit only 1 or 2 CM's per RD. Not even close to reality regarding how comms work, but hey, this is the Honorverse. I see no reason they could not do so. All it requires is systems integration. Work required for sure, but the components are present and already paid for...

MDM's; one at least can argue for the need for a higher bandwidth. Personally I think that "need" is baloney as one can address nearly every single piece of data before hand via parameter programming, but at least one can rationally make the argument.

So, if one wants a defensive "keyhole" light, AFAIAC, it already exists. The RD's simply have not been integrated yet.

PS. If you go Keyhole "light", send it out a bay on the top/bottom of the ship, not its side. Honorverse has tractors that can push/pull. I don't see why such an arrangement would be a problem. Yes, slightly slower jettisoning it, but for a small ship? Shouldn't be a problem. After all that is how they jettison their RD's when they need "instantaneous" spread sensors.

Relax wrote:Why is anyone placing Keyholes on light ships? They already have self motivating platforms that can communicate. Can communicate via light speed coms and FTL over VERY long distances measured in light minutes... They also have scanning sensors to give a clear picture of what is where and who is what. It is merely a matter of bandwidth.

What is more useful? An extra 20 RD's, or a single keyhole? I'll take an extra side helping of RD's please. Oh, and a few more RD's please.

CM's effectively require no bandwidth. They need a vector to follow and coordinates of incoming. Beyond that? Zilch. Even if you guys wish to limit only 1 or 2 CM's per RD. Not even close to reality regarding how comms work, but hey, this is the Honorverse. I see no reason they could not do so. All it requires is systems integration. Work required for sure, but the components are present and already paid for...

MDM's; one at least can argue for the need for a higher bandwidth. Personally I think that "need" is baloney as one can address nearly every single piece of data before hand via parameter programming, but at least one can rationally make the argument.

So, if one wants a defensive "keyhole" light, AFAIAC, it already exists. The RD's simply have not been integrated yet.

PS. If you go Keyhole "light", send it out a bay on the top/bottom of the ship, not its side. Honorverse has tractors that can push/pull. I don't see why such an arrangement would be a problem. Yes, slightly slower jettisoning it, but for a small ship? Shouldn't be a problem. After all that is how they jettison their RD's when they need "instantaneous" spread sensors.

If you assume a defenseive keyhole is about the size of an RD then yes, you'd certainly find a corner of a boat bay to stick it in and drop it out the bottom like a shuttle or RD. If you assume that, for whatever reason, it's still a pretty darn big object (in trying to avoid TARDIS ships I was thinking of around 35-40% the size of a full up Keyhole I) it would displace a fair bit of stuff to stick one on bottom (or top) of a small ship.

We don't really have the details to know how big a CM controlling keyhole would be in the Honorverse. And it's certainly possible that the tradeoffs to put a remote defensive platform on a smaller ship aren't yet worth it - that was part of the reason for posting this design, to stimulate discussion on that.

Jonathan_S wrote:
Anyway here's the numbers I ballparked for my CL-X design.
Mass 480,000 tons
Length 610 m
Beam 74 m
Draught 57 m
Acceleration 771.3 G
Missiles (broadside) 12 DDM
Missiles (chase)
Missiles (total) 24
Grasers (broadside) 4
Grasers (chase) 2
Grasers (total) 12
CM tubes (broadside) 20
CM tubes (chase)
CM tubes (total) 40
PDLC (broadside) 14
PDLC (chase) 7
PDLC (total) 42
Keyhole-D 2

I'd like thoughts. Is it too big; did I not give up enough to squeeze in defensive keyholes; is the mission obsolete?

My stab in the dark at CL/DD: Eliminate one class.

Zero Keyholes: RD's^ See my previous post
30RD's 500-1000tons each ~~ 15,000-30,000tons

Tractored pods: ~15-20

DDM missiles
Missile stowage 20 rounds/tube
8 tubes/broadside
Angled to fit into a smaller hull
320 DDM Missiles ~~ 32,000tons

Some CM magazines have ability to hold the longer Viper, some don't. 25%
CM stowage 40 rounds/tube
16 tubes/broadside
1280CM ~~ 15,000-20,000tons

PDLC: Same as on SAG-C?
10/broadside 6 Chase
32 Total ~ 300ton/? ~~10,000tons

Grasers 2 Chase 5 Broadside
Tonnage? 20,000tons?

Marines available
Shuttles/Pinnaces? Differences??? 2
~2000 tons.

Tonnage for active offensive/defensive/sensors
Roughly 100,000 tons.

Call it 1/3 or 1/4 of total propulsion
300,000-400,000 ton ship where much of the tonnage is in sidewall generators due to all ships running around with capital grade laser heads.

Jonathan_S wrote:We don't really have the details to know how big a CM controlling keyhole would be in the Honorverse. And it's certainly possible that the tradeoffs to put a remote defensive platform on a smaller ship aren't yet worth it - that was part of the reason for posting this design, to stimulate discussion on that.

Yea, well, I say we do. It is called an RD. Only needs the handshakes to make it work. No need for a "defensive only" keyhole on a singleton or at most squadron of light ships.

Now big boys who are launching and controlling thousands of CM's at once?(do we dip into reality, or use Honorverse "logic")... Depending on how one bases their defense scheme, reality says that the bandwidth required for controlling 1 CM is effectively no more than controlling a 1000 or a million. All you have to do is broadcast the spacial coordinates of the objects incoming. Hierarchical programming on the CM's does the rest(reality as no one has the cognitive time nor the transmission time to do otherwise).

This is especially true when one has thousands of ships present firing thousands of missiles. At some point you have to cut the # of individual channels to only a few broad channels to prevent interference and white noise flooding, otherwise you just hash your own EMS. IE, it will never happen in the 1:1 RFC Honorverse way due to battle fleet logistics.

Makes me laugh when someone says: F35 is the last manned fighter... Unless they are going to design autonomous aircraft there is literally no way in this world one can fly more than a squadron or two fighters and still receive all of the required information as the other side is not stupid and will be jamming the entire EMS while relying on manned fighters that do not require EMS data link...

Relax wrote:Why is anyone placing Keyholes on light ships? They already have self motivating platforms that can communicate. Can communicate via light speed coms and FTL over VERY long distances measured in light minutes... They also have scanning sensors to give a clear picture of what is where and who is what. It is merely a matter of bandwidth.

What is more useful? An extra 20 RD's, or a single keyhole? I'll take an extra side helping of RD's please. Oh, and a few more RD's please.

CM's effectively require no bandwidth. They need a vector to follow and coordinates of incoming. Beyond that? Zilch. Even if you guys wish to limit only 1 or 2 CM's per RD. Not even close to reality regarding how comms work, but hey, this is the Honorverse. I see no reason they could not do so. All it requires is systems integration. Work required for sure, but the components are present and already paid for...

MDM's; one at least can argue for the need for a higher bandwidth. Personally I think that "need" is baloney as one can address nearly every single piece of data before hand via parameter programming, but at least one can rationally make the argument.

So, if one wants a defensive "keyhole" light, AFAIAC, it already exists. The RD's simply have not been integrated yet.

PS. If you go Keyhole "light", send it out a bay on the top/bottom of the ship, not its side. Honorverse has tractors that can push/pull. I don't see why such an arrangement would be a problem. Yes, slightly slower jettisoning it, but for a small ship? Shouldn't be a problem. After all that is how they jettison their RD's when they need "instantaneous" spread sensors.

I proposed a modded Drone = Baby Keyhole idea about 2 years ago - even if it would only gave a handful of firecontrol channels (offensive or defensive) per drone, it would be a boon for light ships in a pinch when they need to roll wedge. I was told by Duckk it was a no-go - If that had really worked, Manticore wouldn't have needed to develop Keyholes (supposedly that was from David).

Honorverse verses Reality.

Relax wrote:Honorverse verses Reality.

Unfortunately, David decides the rules for the honorverse, so you'll just have to go along if you want to play in his sandbox.

Your defensive Keyhole is not as good as a Katana. I like how everyone cherry picked their way around it, Wooo Lord Skimper can't have a good idea....

As For sometoes reasoning for not using the Nike or an Agamemnon sized ship for the new cruiser it doesn't stand up anymore.

DDM and MDM missiles changed it. Adding in the reduced crews 85 on a Wolfhound are not enough to do the job of old. It was 250-350. The new numbers carried by a 1.5-2.5 MTons.

Given the need of Manticore to not put its citizens in harms way and every little ship towing Mk23 pods Every little ship is going to be killed any time it shows up anywhere. Adding 2 to 3 ships to every single ship mission adds the build time of two or three ships to the mission cost time. A Nike or Confederate doesn't cost three times the build times of the Wolfhound. Three wolfhounds couldn't do what Honor did in OBS. They just don't have the crew. It isn't now, you need to look 20 years from now. 20 Years from now an Avalon and a Wolfhound will be fast and not that fast to the current ships then, targets. Don't build paper anvils, build adamantium hammers.

Confederate SC in Twenty years will be the now Roland with Marines and Crew and LAC and current Keyhole. Compared to the Now Havok DD. Totally out classed and only used because it carries enough crew to do everything Even the Sag C can't do.

The Confederate replaces everything smaller than itself. One ship acting alone and fully capable doing it for the next 20 years. Honor in a Confederate OBS. No problem. Only the ending is different and a few more Manties are alive.

Seems DD lasers are weaker than viper missiles. Amazing perhaps we get rid of the Lasers and just use Viper missiles.

hmmm...

Sometoes lives in the past were BC attack with grasers. That never happens anymore. Didn't six Solarin BC try that on 3 CA and 4 DD recently? How did all those grasers do?