How to use a Super Cruiser

Confederate Super Cruiser

Using SD Parts is a goal to recycle these now worthless ships into something worthwhile

Based upon the Nike Design with a few modifications

Broadside:

25 Apollo Tubes (magazines of adjustable sizes)

6 SD Grasers

4 Sets of 7 DD lasers in 2/3/2 hex cluster

32 CM

32 SD PD clusters

Fore Hammerhead:

3 SD Grasers

3 sets of 3 DD lasers

3 CM

3 SD PD Clusters

Aft Hammerhead:

3 SD Grasers

3 SD PD

3 CM

&

One Multi use Keyhole Dock
1 Keyhole II
or 1 Keyhole I and 1 LAC Shrike size
or 3 LAC Shrike size

Alternatively the rear dock can be setup to carry 28 Pods, not both

28 Mk16 pods plus 49 Apollo fired from tubes plus 1 extra EW of largest size.
This is a full long range 392 missile plus 50 missile salvo. Firing the full pod load at 75 million Km range using a ballistic phase and Apollo. followed up with whatever missiles are carried internally.

In the wall the Confederate is able to fire a full 50 extra Apollo missiles, adding 400 extra missiles to any salvo from pods. 40 Mk23 only pods for instance. Using its own Keyhole II it is able to control all 50 plus 50 additional Apollo pods another 400 missiles adding 800 total missiles to the Salvo. plus able to engage and destroy any ships that survive such engagements.

Operating with BC(P), they can multiply the fire power of the squadron, 2 BC(P) and 6 Confederate SC squadrons can fire a full load of 720 pods in a single salvo of 9,600 Mk23 missiles. All Apollo controlled. The BC(P) then withdraw to a defensive position or flee while the SC press the attack or provide covering fire as they retreat.

I don't think that we'll see such a vessel; at least not in the service of the RMN or the GA at all. There is simply no need. After all, she would be (in all but name) a battleship - with Apollo and Mk23s in her magazines; and there is no doctrine for the use of battleships. The old Triumphants of the then-PRHN were only good for suppressing internal unrest; in a modern war environment they proved to be more or less useless. The same would be true for this class. They simply can't compete against SD(P)s; and you have to develop new classes against the worst possible environment they could meet. That means an environment with podlayers in general use. And with 2 or even 3 Million tons they simply don't have the stamina to be successful.

Lord Skimper wrote:utter nonsense turned into a god ship

In a word.... no.

In more words, stop posting ridiculousness like this please? We get it, you want to be invincible and make everyone and their entire fleet fear your single ship... go write your own book instead.

Edit: to actually address the points however, so I'm not simply bashing and being as terrible for these forums as you however... I will attempt to address these terrible points:

Lord Skimper wrote:Based upon the Nike Design with a few modifications

this is the only reasonable thing you mentioned in the entire post really. It's only logical to look at existing ships for the potential for upgrades...

however once you got started

Lord Skimper wrote:Broadside:
25 Apollo Tubes (magazines of adjustable sizes)

You don't have adjustable magazine sizes. They're a box of X size and Y length, and it's designed to hold missiles upon ship design. Now since you specifically state Apollo, what you actually mean are Mark 23's, so your magazines would be designed for those capital ship missiles.

I'll even concede that since battlecruisers are the smallest capital ship, it does (to a point), make sense for them to also fire capital ship missiles. However you're reducing the 6000 Mark 16 missile maximum of a Nike by probably 30% just because of the size differential between Mark 16's and Mark 23's. Then you're reducing THAT number by another 30% because the Apollo Control Missiles take up that much room in the standard pods. That works out to roughly 2600-3000 or so mixed EW and shipkillers and a few hundred ACM's. For an amazing accuracy increase, you've sacrificed over 50% of your shipkillers for virtually zero effective increase. Mark 16 mod G's are currently just as deadly to all known threats as Mark 23's with Apollo, so you get zero firepower increase for 50% ammo reduction.... not good.

Moving on shall we,

Lord Skimper wrote:6 SD Grasers
4 Sets of 7 DD lasers in 2/3/2 hex cluster

Considering that the Nike's probably are already carrying 28 SD grasers, that's a ridiculously high reduction, but since the original Nike's carried 25 Mark 16 launchers per broadside and you want to change the broadside to 25 Mark 23 Apollo's.... ok I can understand why you scaled the energy battery so drastically. I don't quite agree that a battlecruiser should be quite so missile heavy, but the logic here is actually sound (for a change).

The destroyer weight laser idea, however, is pure idiocy. Shipkiller lasers and grasers do NOT get mounted in arrays like that, that sort of design is of a Point Defense Laser Cluster, and would have way less firepower, not to mention being almost useless as offensive weapons. You might squeeze in a few destroyer weight lasers, but if you're mounting SD grasers, you may as well drop the lasers entirely because grasers are more powerful, longer ranged, and admittedly slightly larger than lasers.

Lord Skimper wrote:32 CM
32 SD PD clusters

Ok, now after we've looked at how you wanted to change the existing Mark 16's to Mark 23's, and slash your energy battery to 20% of the original Nike class, and if we cut the lasers entirely... as I stated, might possibly make sense for the missile launcher size increase, you want to give it slightly more active missile defense?

Again, pointing out that if you drop the nonsense of trying to also mount destroyer lasers... granted you might be able to squeeze slightly more CM tubes and PDLC's to make up for the fact you gave up 80% of your shipkiller energy battery.

Lord Skimper wrote:Fore Hammerhead:
3 SD Grasers
3 sets of 3 DD lasers
3 CM
3 SD PD Clusters

You have this very odd, and stupid fixation on giving SD grasers, and destroyer lasers. One, or the other, especially considering how big a difference in performance is. And no destroyer, outside of perhaps a few, carried anything except pure laser energy batteries. Cruisers traded off some lasers for a few grasers to give them more punch without giving up too much in the way of ability to hit multiple targets.

Which means you either go for a "mixed" energy battery of cruiser weight grasers & lasers, or mount only the SD grasers. Pick one or the other.

Lord Skimper wrote:Aft Hammerhead:

3 SD Grasers
3 SD PD
3 CM
&
One Multi use Keyhole Dock
1 Keyhole II
or 1 Keyhole I and 1 LAC Shrike size
or 3 LAC Shrike size

Alternatively the rear dock can be setup to carry 28 Pods, not both

28 Mk16 pods plus 49 Apollo fired from tubes plus 1 extra EW of largest size.
This is a full long range 392 missile plus 50 missile salvo. Firing the full pod load at 75 million Km range using a ballistic phase and Apollo. followed up with whatever missiles are carried internally.

No, just no. Any version of pod anything = this is now a podlaying battlecruiser not a return to "traditional" battlecruisers which are supposed to be big, beefy cruisers and not eggshells armed with sledgehammers like the BCP's are.

I wonder if the DD lasers are meant as a longer range point defense.

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Annachie wrote:I wonder if the DD lasers are meant as a longer range point defense.

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How he's trying to "hex cluster" the DD lasers, is essentially how the Roland's cram squeeze so many missile launchers into their hammerheads. But even the Roland doesn't hex cluster in a 2-3-2, the Roland simply puts 3 launchers into only slightly more space than one launcher would have occupied, with the relevant support equipment modified to service all 3 launchers instead of one.

And destroyer lasers are still single shot, all-up lasers, rather than mounting an SD sized PDLC. We have no actual data on SD PDLC's as far as I know, but we DO know a Saganami-C's has 8 lasers per cluster (and a total of 24 clusters, making for over 192 total lasing rods)

And lastly, PDLC's are both vastly smaller, and faster firing in the missile defense role than lasers could be, and if you're shooting at an enemy SHIP, the SD grasers are better because they're grasers. And if you're shooting at a merchant ship, then you have pinnaces with their tiny-assed 3cm lasers to shoot the merchy with.

How to use a super Cruiser?

As a target

Missile defense at medium range, however given the speed of incoming missiles everything gets fired in a shotgun effect. Missiles cover the CM to PD range in a fraction of a second. Not like the App game, missiles are coming in faster than you can think. Basically you fire your CM and then your PD, this adds a DD laser with it's much lower energy requirement, than a SD Graser. Everything gets fired in a box pattern on what the wedge doesn't cover. Sure the computers try to determine the best place to put the box. In the book everyone is overwhelmed in reality no-one would be able to think fast enough to notice till well after the fact. What sells books and takes three paragraphs in reality would be a thoughtless blink.

Placement is in a broadside without a Keyhole.

Magazines are adjustable when made to be so. No big deal if made to do so. I used to stack hundreds of tons of various steel on racks, same racks different steel. Rebar, 40-60 feet in length. 10mm to 55mm diameter. Give me a billion dollars and i could design a rack that adjusts, holds everything secure. Give me grav plates and I can move 300 ton missiles like an overhead crane moves 5 tons of rebar in 1 Earth Gravity. Yes I used to be a steel worker.

Come to think about it I used to move and shake out steel in the 'processing' of rebar. Cutting and moving many bars using hydraulic 'tables'. Talk about noisey the only thing louder was the lightning bolt that hit my townhouse roof five feet above me. That was so loud it was completely silent. So white it was the opposite of the darkest room, until the fireball rolled of the concrete roof and hit the neighbor's tree and blew it in half. Cracked my bedroom window frame.

Anyhow, adjustable magazines for different sized missiles, no problem.

Nike carry 12,000 Mk16 missiles. Roland has 20 missiles per tube, Saganami C has three times that 60 per tube, Nike has 4 times the Saganami C 240 per tube.

If you don't think any of this will fit look at the Saganami C.

You would not carry 3000 Apollo missiles, you might carry 300 but then you would, depending on role and political considerations, also carry 1000-2000 Mk23 and the rest would be Mk16's. or all Mk23 or what not. Could just be 10000 Mk23 and a few hundred Mk23 and 50-100 Apollo. Remember bigger tubes can fire smaller missiles of the same base type. Theoretically a capacitor tube should be able to fire CM. Never read that in a book though.

In peacetime patrol a Confederate Super Cruiser carries a few Mk23 and Apollo, mostly just Mk16 missiles. Add in 3 LAC, an Assault shuttle and three pinnace. OBS no problem HoQ no problem.

The only downside of a Battleship is its armour and energy reliance. In 1922-42PD a Battleship be it a Nike Battlecruiser or a Confederate Super Cruiser a Battleship is not a Battleship. it is a Cruiser. A Confederate can be a Nike or it can hunt down and kill a Nike or in a Squadron can hunt down and kill SD(P) or associated craft in the wall of battle.

Finally don't plan for now. Plan for 20-40 years from now. Everyone is using Mk16 or Mk23 missiles. The new Roland missile is a Mk23 with internal apollo that links every missile to every other and stacks missile launches 6 deep. 3-4 stage missiles and ranges of 75-100 million Km.

A current Roland is the new 'havok'. The Saganami C are all under refit, The Nike are okay but have trouble fighting back. The Confederate on the otherhand pops the new Roland like a Nike does the current ones.

As for DD lasers in clusters. They may replace PD as missiles start firing further out or get missile bucklers. Who knows what happens in 40 years, save the MWW.

all interesting considerations. The problem i see with having different sized missles in the mags is, that the lunchers also would have to adopt to different sizes. Would be big failure point in my opinion.

Lord Skimper wrote:Missile defense at medium range, however given the speed of incoming missiles everything gets fired in a shotgun effect. Missiles cover the CM to PD range in a fraction of a second. Not like the App game, missiles are coming in faster than you can think. Basically you fire your CM and then your PD, this adds a DD laser with it's much lower energy requirement, than a SD Graser.

Um, no. Clearly you didn't do the math. The CM intercept zone reaches out to 3 million km. The PDLC defense zone is, IIRC, 100,000 km. Even in basically the worst case, an MDM at terminal range closing in at nearly 0.8c it takes it over 12 seconds to cross that distance.

Now it does cover the smaller PDLC zone much more quickly. That's only 70,000 km from PDLC range until laserhead detonation at 30,000 km. A terminal velocity MDM can cover that in 3/10th of a second.

If you engage with main energy batteries at their normal range of 400,000 km they can chime in 1.7 seconds sooner than the PDLC. OTOH I don't think you'll even get one shot per salvo out of them unless the enemy is waiting to stack multiple salvos before firing.



Note 1: All these calculations are for max range MDMs, against closer targets the missiles are moving slower and will take longe to cross each of these ranges.

Note 2: These are just times for the missile to cross. But in all cases, even the PDLC, you have a bit longer that than to engage because you can fire to meet it as it enters your range. The PDLC's laser takes 3/10ths of a second to cover 100,000 km; so you've got over 1/2 a second to engage.

Jonathan_S wrote:If you engage with main energy batteries at their normal range of 400,000 km they can chime in 1.7 seconds sooner than the PDLC. OTOH I don't think you'll even get one shot per salvo out of them unless the enemy is waiting to stack multiple salvos before firing.

Minor nit: 400,000 km is the range at which energy weapons can reliably penetrate sidewalls. They're good for ~1,000,000 km against non-sidewalled targets (see Battle of Cerberus). IIRC, missiles don't have sidewalls.