New Tower system ships.

Bigger this time for consideration. Still much smaller than the HAC call it a medium small attack craft.

Tower, an LAC / Keyhole II / Roland.

Roland without Mk16 missiles. Add 6 CM Launchers in place of the 6 Mk16 tubes fore and aft. Add a chase fore and aft pod bay, two or three pods each. Used for maintaining fixing and keeping pods on station.

Each Tower is a full Keyhole II with added CM tubes and DD lasers.

Without the Mk16 magazines and without Hyper generators or Alpha Nodes. Beta squared nodes only. The Tower is shorter and bigger around than a Roland. More powerful Wedge and sidewalls. Carries lots of CM's.

Maybe DDCM?

We all know CM tubes can't have two stage CM's fired from them. But a new tube could be made for DDCM's. In a Tower such tubes could replace the Mk16 tubes. Smaller diameter but longer for the second stage. As determined earlier, DDCM would have 16+ Million, KM range. Good enough for a small missile. Two 75 second 130k G accelerations. Viper or CM uses suddenly the CM DDCM tubes come into their own. In new ships all CM tubes could be DDCM tubes.

People get this silly notion, expressed in the app game, of slow missiles with huge arcs of fire. This isn't the case, missiles are fired in tight cones of fire. Reverse cones at that. Wider as they accelerate out then narrowing early and blasting in fast. Small adjustments can be made but they are coming so fast at their terminal end speeds that even 100K G acceleration only nudges them a few tenth of a degree off the cone.

Lord Skimper wrote:Bigger this time for consideration. Still much smaller than the HAC call it a medium small attack craft.

Tower, an LAC / Keyhole II / Roland.

Roland without Mk16 missiles. Add 6 CM Launchers in place of the 6 Mk16 tubes fore and aft. Add a chase fore and aft pod bay, two or three pods each. Used for maintaining fixing and keeping pods on station.

Each Tower is a full Keyhole II with added CM tubes and DD lasers.

Without the Mk16 magazines and without Hyper generators or Alpha Nodes. Beta squared nodes only. The Tower is shorter and bigger around than a Roland. More powerful Wedge and sidewalls. Carries lots of CM's.

Maybe DDCM?

Correct me if I'm wrong - but as far as I remember, a KH2-module for SD(P)s masses around 25.000 tons - or as much as a Shrike-LAC. I don't know if you can minimize it to a mass that you could put into a 35.000-40.000-Ton MAC (Medium Attack Craft). If the relation between Mass of "Mothership" and Mass of KH2 remains the same, (the KH2 masses around 0.25% of the mass of its mothership) the MAC-KH2-Module had to be around 100 Tons, max. That seem's impossible to me ...

And if you build your MAC around a Roland with its mass of 270.000 Tons or so (as you propose), the KH2 could only have around 600-700 Tons. Maybe as much as 1.500 to 2.000 tons, if you only uses Beta-square-nodes in your MACs). But ... I simply can't see, how you could minimize the necessary hardware enough and still have an effective KH2-platform. Maybe it is possible 50 or 100 years down the road, but in 1923/1924 PD? I don't think so.

A 2nd point: How do you want to transport your Roland-based MAC? You would need a complete new Carrier-class, a C-MAC, and you could only transport a dozen MACs or so in one of them. That, too, is not something I would call effective.

There is no pressing need for such a ship/capability.

Also atm, the smallest unit capable carrying Keyhole 2 is still a Battlecruiser.
Sure, you can essentially take a keyhole and add an impeller/hyper drive, but you'd just end up with a ultra specialized platform/drone, which, to say the least, are quite rare in the Honorverse.

As far as I have seen the Keyhole 1 is 60-80,000 tons. And the Keyhole 2 is 120,000 tons. A 180,000 ton Tower would offer full Keyhole 2 telemetry, Offer Roland sized crews and without a hyperdrive and by using Beta squared nodes you get more speed and power for wedge and sidewalls.

Star Knight wrote:There is no pressing need for such a ship/capability.

Also atm, the smallest unit capable carrying Keyhole 2 is still a Battlecruiser.
Sure, you can essentially take a keyhole and add an impeller/hyper drive, but you'd just end up with a ultra specialized platform/drone, which, to say the least, are quite rare in the Honorverse.

Keyhole 2 is only carried by SD(P).

Keyhole 1 is carried by the Big Battle Cruisers.

Reread first post not adding hyper drive. And Keyhole 1 and 2 already have Impeller drives.

Lord Skimper wrote:As far as I have seen the Keyhole 1 is 60-80,000 tons. And the Keyhole 2 is 120,000 tons. A 180,000 ton Tower would offer full Keyhole 2 telemetry, Offer Roland sized crews and without a hyperdrive and by using Beta squared nodes you get more speed and power for wedge and sidewalls.

I'm still confused why you want a tiny fast fort with basically all fire control and no missiles.

If you want to protect a terminus or a planet the RMN already has pod-laying keyhole II equipped fort designs that they were rolling out - and they're far more survivable than something the size of a CL would be.

If you want to attack you need a hyper drive and to bring missiles along.

If you're not doing either then what the point of this "tower" ship?

Lord Skimper wrote:Keyhole 2 is only carried by SD(P).

Keyhole 1 is carried by the Big Battle Cruisers.

yes of course. Anything smaller than an BC cant carry any Keyhole.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'm still confused why you want a tiny fast fort with basically all fire control and no missiles.

Well in theory its a mobile system defense fire control platform.
Kinda like the thing Haven had at Solon (Moriarty i think it was called), just more mobile.
So you could dump the platform in some conquered Sollie system with an ammo carrier or two and it would be impossible for even an heavy Battle Fleet Task Force to retake the system.
If it doesnt have a hyperdrive maybe you can transport it with a freighter, or even tractor beams.
But the point is, just like you said, its not needed. Especially not in a system defense role in Alliance space.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:As far as I have seen the Keyhole 1 is 60-80,000 tons. And the Keyhole 2 is 120,000 tons. A 180,000 ton Tower would offer full Keyhole 2 telemetry, Offer Roland sized crews and without a hyperdrive and by using Beta squared nodes you get more speed and power for wedge and sidewalls.

I'm still confused why you want a tiny fast fort with basically all fire control and no missiles.

If you want to protect a terminus or a planet the RMN already has pod-laying keyhole II equipped fort designs that they were rolling out - and they're far more survivable than something the size of a CL would be.

If you want to attack you need a hyper drive and to bring missiles along.

If you're not doing either then what the point of this "tower" ship?

Think of a single Freighter delivering a set of Towers and a bunch of pods. Suddenly a system is secured. Sure you could expand it with a Fort and whole Pod based defense system later on, with Pod support ships etc... But that takes time and many ships and supports and huge crews and huge number of pods etc... A Tower Freighter, maybe a Fast Freighter, Delivers 12 Towers and a 1000 pods. In a few hours you have a secure system or terminus etc...

Towers are defensive systems. The CM's are for defense limited offense and The Keyhole II system integrated lets you control 200-400 Mk23's each salvo. 2000-4000 total missiles per salvo. 2-4 salvos per Freighter. The freighter is then able to haul Cargo. The system is secure and if it is determined to be a long term important system, it gets beefed up with Mycroft and Fortes. Otherwise it is a Tower defended system. Simple and easy, whole Tower system can be deployed or packed up in a day.

How many of these could Henke of used moving through SL systems on her way to Mesa? A dozen or two? How many of those would she have deployed a full Forte based Mycroft system in? One or two maybe? And the others just kind of on their own or having to leave ships behind and split her forces.

Deploy a Tower system or 12 at Beowulf and if need be they are there, and if the vote goes against Manticore it can be packed up in a day and transition out in a day. Mycroft and Fortes can't.

Hunh Star Knight beat me to it.

Think of a single Freighter delivering a set of Towers and a bunch of pods. Suddenly a system is secured

Yes it would be secured but it would also be massive overkill.
Even against mere Heavy Cruisers the SLN cant retake the system as long as there are enough missile pods. That’s the real bottleneck here, not fire control links or anything. As long as there are enough missiles pods strategically dispersed in the system, a single CruRon or a BatCruDiv could theoretically take out an entire heavy Battle Fleet Task Force.
Dedicated Keyhole ships are simply not needed. The RMN would just deploy Mycroft platforms if it would actually be necessary anyway.

How many of these could Henke of used moving through SL systems on her way to Mesa?

Hopefully none. No reason not to go directly to Mesa.

Deploy a Tower system or 12 at Beowulf and if need be they are there, and if the vote goes against Manticore it can be packed up in a day and transition out in a day. Mycroft and Fortes can't.

Why not?
But more importantly: Why bother? As long as there are enough ammo reserves a single Invictus Battle Squadron can hold a system against anything Battle Fleet can realistically throw at it.
Hell, the internal loads of the Invictus SD(P)s can probably knock out 150 to 200 solarian wallers. The power discrepancy is so ridiculous atm, there is no reason at all to worry about defense of anything.