BC(C) (Spoiler Within)

This is an idea I'v had floating around for awhile. Battlecruiser(Carrier). In short, the concept is a roughly ~2.5m ton LAC carrier with the acceleration to keep up with raiding squadrons made up of below the wall units.

Basic concept:

Roughly similar to the Nike in size and weight, the ship foregoes all offensive weaponry in the broadsides in favor of LAC bays and missile defense systems. At both hammerheads it has 8 missile tubes capable of firing latest generation MDMs situated to fire fore/aft, with enough control links to quadruple stack the salvos for a total of 64 missiles.

The primary missions of these ships will be threefold: (1) To carry roughly 30 LACs with raiding forces to drastically thicken the anti-missile firepower available; (2) To function as the flagship of raiding squadrons composed of Cruisers, Destroyers, and the new Modular ships stuffed with Apollo pods; and (3) To replace multi-ship convoy escorts with one ship capable of handling multiple raiders (via the MDMs and LACs); and (4) to serve as highly mobile reinforcements for regions such as Silesia, Talbott, and Maya capable of projecting force far above their weight/manpower thanks to the combination of MDMs and LACs.

Thoughts on the basic concept? Until the new modular ship made an appearance (and was highly effective) I wasn't going to bring this idea up...

Erls wrote:This is an idea I'v had floating around for awhile. Battlecruiser(Carrier). In short, the concept is a roughly ~2.5m ton LAC carrier with the acceleration to keep up with raiding squadrons made up of below the wall units.

Basic concept:

Roughly similar to the Nike in size and weight, the ship foregoes all offensive weaponry in the broadsides in favor of LAC bays and missile defense systems. At both hammerheads it has 8 missile tubes capable of firing latest generation MDMs situated to fire fore/aft, with enough control links to quadruple stack the salvos for a total of 64 missiles.

The primary missions of these ships will be threefold: (1) To carry roughly 30 LACs with raiding forces to drastically thicken the anti-missile firepower available; (2) To function as the flagship of raiding squadrons composed of Cruisers, Destroyers, and the new Modular ships stuffed with Apollo pods; and (3) To replace multi-ship convoy escorts with one ship capable of handling multiple raiders (via the MDMs and LACs); and (4) to serve as highly mobile reinforcements for regions such as Silesia, Talbott, and Maya capable of projecting force far above their weight/manpower thanks to the combination of MDMs and LACs.

Thoughts on the basic concept? Until the new modular ship made an appearance (and was highly effective) I wasn't going to bring this idea up...

Problem is there's no room. The DN-sized standard CLACs have a MUCH wider hull than normal. This isn't apparent in HoS by just looking at the line art (especially since it's a side view), but if you compare the dimensions to a similarly-sized DN, you'll notice the difference in the numbers. Forex, the Bellerophon is 164m longer than a Flight II Hydra CLAC, but 1m *narrower* in width.

That extra width (in ratio to its length) is to accomodate the length of the LACs parked nose-to-nose in each broadside, with just a few meters of space between them for accessways and such. Extra width that a BC-sized carrier doesn't have. I suppose one could stagger the LAC bays such that the noses of the LACs overlapped each other as you go down the line, but doing that, one may not be able to fit as many as you propose. Not to mention how annoyingly zig-zaggy that access corridor would be - left-right-right-left-left-right-right-left...

Now, I haven't gotten far enough in the eARC (page 58 - work has been busy lately) to know anything about this "modular ship" that you're talking about, so it MAY be that something along the lines of what you propose MAY work. I don't know. I've not ever heard anything about this ship from anyone else in BuNine, and I strongly suspect that if anyone in BuNine DID know about it (prior to the eARC), it'll be Tom Pope, and he never even hinted at it to me at the BuNine Meeting in early July.

Yeah... I'm just as much in the dark about this as you are - even more really, since you've actually read about it.

Erls wrote:This is an idea I'v had floating around for awhile. Battlecruiser(Carrier). In short, the concept is a roughly ~2.5m ton LAC carrier with the acceleration to keep up with raiding squadrons made up of below the wall units.

Basic concept:

Roughly similar to the Nike in size and weight, the ship foregoes all offensive weaponry in the broadsides in favor of LAC bays and missile defense systems. At both hammerheads it has 8 missile tubes capable of firing latest generation MDMs situated to fire fore/aft, with enough control links to quadruple stack the salvos for a total of 64 missiles.

The primary missions of these ships will be threefold: (1) To carry roughly 30 LACs with raiding forces to drastically thicken the anti-missile firepower available; (2) To function as the flagship of raiding squadrons composed of Cruisers, Destroyers, and the new Modular ships stuffed with Apollo pods; and (3) To replace multi-ship convoy escorts with one ship capable of handling multiple raiders (via the MDMs and LACs); and (4) to serve as highly mobile reinforcements for regions such as Silesia, Talbott, and Maya capable of projecting force far above their weight/manpower thanks to the combination of MDMs and LACs.

Thoughts on the basic concept? Until the new modular ship made an appearance (and was highly effective) I wasn't going to bring this idea up...

Well, maybe a couple.

1) All the pictures of warships we've seen now show the bow and stern hammerheads being in the same plane. If *both* of them are intended to fire either way, you'd probably want them at 90 degree angles to each other, so that firing forward from the aft hammerhead avoids hitting the bow one. I don't think we have enough information on the impeller drive to know if that's possible or not for sure, but since the "wedge" seems to flow flat with - though not especially close to - the top and bottom of a ship, I'd say it's likely suck orientation would cause problems with the drive.

2) The modular ships have LACs of their own. Eight of them, I believe. LACs are of minimal use in any engagement outside of n-space, since they can't change hyperbands like starships can. They could only remain in whatever band the ship carrying them was in when it dropped them off. Except for entering star systems and stopping at planets, ships usually stay in hyper.

3) I'm not sure how many it could support, but a Nike *could* theoretically tractor some number of LACs inside it's wedge and carry them anyway, without impacting it's offensive or defensive weapons load. After all, that's how the Peeps got LACs into Yeltsin in HofTQ. While it strained the Peep battlecruiser a bit, I'm sure Manty tech has improved tractor beams just like everything else. Perhaps the Saganami-C type cruisers could carry a few as well.

4) Most "raiding forces" are intended to hit relatively unprotected targets. I doubt you'd want to waste available carrying load on the LACs with purely defensive loadouts when they probably wouldn't need them. You'd only need it if you happened to be raiding a system where some defenders accidentally happened to be at the same time.

5) Also, most "flagships" carry commands of something other than just a captain. Usually a commodore or an admiral. Those folks tend to have staffs. The actual ship commander usually does, too. With 30 LAC bays, not to mention space needed for the LAC support gear; at least *some* extra munitions (to speed up rearming); etc, there's probably not going to be a lot of "crew space" left over for any extra command staff.

6) As also noted by MaxxQ, the ship probably isn't "thick" enough to house LACs nose to nose or stern to stern or however they might keep them. That means you'd have to "offset" the LAC bays on each side. Which may mean fewer LACs, though it probably would make servicing and arming them a bit easier, since parts and ordanance could be stored just across the central aisle or even in the space next to each bay.

Just checked HoS again after a thought. The shortest LACs are 71m long. A Nike is 129m wide. With no armor, that means that a Nike-sized LAC carrier would be 13m too narrow for nose-to-nose LAC parking. You would need to widen a Nike - at a minimum - 50m to accomodate LACs in a similar manner to standard CLACs (that accounts for the extra 13m needed, plus room for armor and accessways between LACs on opposite broadsides from one another). Note that that's just a few meters less than the width of the Flight II Hydra.

Back around the time At All Costs came out, as far as I recall, there was a discussion of escort carriers, someone did the math (and this was before we knew that DN mass CLACs had extra width abeam) and it was determined that minimum size for a CLAC that had bays that are like those of current designs came out to around 4 mts, and that semihandwaved fusion plants. This was part of a torch navy discussion. So we assumed that the escort CLAC would be a hybrid troopship, assult shuttlebays, or just armour and barracks would replace the bays over the fusion plants.

We eventually determined that if you wanted a escort CLAC, either you use a merchant's cargo hold, or you limpet the LACs, sort of like a keyhole 1, or the andie's half pods, obviously resupply in such circumstances is rather difficult.

MaxxQ wrote:Just checked HoS again after a thought. The shortest LACs are 71m long. A Nike is 129m wide. With no armor, that means that a Nike-sized LAC carrier would be 13m too narrow for nose-to-nose LAC parking. You would need to widen a Nike - at a minimum - 50m to accomodate LACs in a similar manner to standard CLACs (that accounts for the extra 13m needed, plus room for armor and accessways between LACs on opposite broadsides from one another). Note that that's just a few meters less than the width of the Flight II Hydra.

SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!


The description in the text for the FSV (Fast Support vessel) is a ~3Mton craft with the forward 20% a merchie style ship, with 8 LAC bays and a CL's (perhaps an Avalon - maybe a Kemerling?) offensive and defensive suite, with full offbore firing. The back is a thin spine with several arms, and a warship style rear hammerhead. Several types of modules can mate to the spine of the ship allowing it to be a repair vessel, hospital ship, ammo ship, troopship, or LAC tender as needed - the modules are quadrants, allowing 4 differing modules to be mounted at any time.

Also of note, the arms have external mooring ports for CUMV(L)s (Cargo unmanned vehicle (Large)) which can also carry extra cargo and munitions externally of the main ship as "CARGO RACKS".

The vessels are designed to be a modular support ship which can keep up with and support detached BC squadrons.

It was never noted what the dimensions were or if the rear modules were included in the given mass. So it could be 3 Mtons WITHOUT the modules, but 4-6 with the module attached.

and still FAT for an optimized compensator.

This addresses several items discussed previously - the need for a forward ammo carrier for patrolling forces (to carry and replenish heavy pod loads on patrols), a light escort carrier for Torch with podlaying and troop transport capability for raids, and a self defense ship for fleet trains to relieve DDs and CLs from the job.

The FSV also slipped out of HoS.

It can't have taken more than 20 months to build, so its final approval must have come through considerably later than the Nike's prototype, otherwise it should've been included.

Yeah, I know HoS obviously doesn't include fleet auxilaries, but the FSV sort of has the same capabilities as the Trojan. And Janacek wanted 12 more of those.

Perhaps once the series concludes, we could get a second edition of HoS, updated to include more details?

Yes, it is in the cards to do a full update if and when the series ends.

Erls wrote:This is an idea I'v had floating around for awhile. Battlecruiser(Carrier). In short, the concept is a roughly ~2.5m ton LAC carrier with the acceleration to keep up with raiding squadrons made up of below the wall units.

Basic concept:

Roughly similar to the Nike in size and weight, the ship foregoes all offensive weaponry in the broadsides in favor of LAC bays and missile defense systems. At both hammerheads it has 8 missile tubes capable of firing latest generation MDMs situated to fire fore/aft, with enough control links to quadruple stack the salvos for a total of 64 missiles.

The primary missions of these ships will be threefold: (1) To carry roughly 30 LACs with raiding forces to drastically thicken the anti-missile firepower available; (2) To function as the flagship of raiding squadrons composed of Cruisers, Destroyers, and the new Modular ships stuffed with Apollo pods; and (3) To replace multi-ship convoy escorts with one ship capable of handling multiple raiders (via the MDMs and LACs); and (4) to serve as highly mobile reinforcements for regions such as Silesia, Talbott, and Maya capable of projecting force far above their weight/manpower thanks to the combination of MDMs and LACs.

Thoughts on the basic concept? Until the new modular ship made an appearance (and was highly effective) I wasn't going to bring this idea up...

It's still really a less than optimal idea, LAC's are always better en masse even for the Manticoran Shrikes, Ferrets and Katana's. So if you strip out too many LAC's from what even the original Minotaur testbed DN carried (100 LACs), just to keep up with a cruiser fleet, you're also sacrificing most of the point in bringing a carrier in the first place. Sure, according to ART, each LAC in Home Fleet is approximately as good as a Solarian War Harvest destroyer [possibly understated here] but that doesn't mean that being able to carry only 30 LAC's is worth a dedicated Carrier-Lite

Said it before in one of Skimpers carrier threads, but a Nike is both a little on the small size, and has crept into traditionally Battleship tonnages (although it's on the small end).

So a battleship carrier BB(C) [yes, I'm fully aware of the jokes here...] would be smaller, faster, and less imposing than sending full up RMN Dreadnought carriers, or RHN Superdreadnought carriers would be. The Havenite Triumphant Battleships at 4.5 MTons base, after being redesigned from being a capital ship waller into a 'fast' carrier raider design could be dropped to around 3.5 MTons or so. That'd still be a little on the large size for the cruiser/destroyer fleet it'd be accompanying, but still faster than a DN would be with at a guess anywhere upto 75% of a DN's LAC load.

And to take Maxx's info into account, the Triumphants are 159m beams to the Nike's 121m (plus 51m to allow a Nike to carry LACs properly) would be very similar sizes. By the time you finished fattening up a Nike class, and possibly lengthening it, you'd end up with almost the base hull of the Trimphant's anyways. And since it's a Havenite hull, if you swapped out the higher bulk Havenite tech for Manticoran, you'd not only get higher performance on everything from fusion power to compensators, but you'd also save internal space, which translates to more LAC's carried.

I'd also point out that this is also roughly the same cost as a Nike. The mission roles specified for the light carrier don't seem substantially different enough to make it a necessity.

1. Bolster missile defenses: Nikes have Keyhole, so they can spit out a lot heavier CM salvos than smaller cruisers. Compared to 30 LACs, it's a wash.

2. Operate as a squadron flagship: Nikes (or for that matter, pretty much all battlecruisers) are built for that role

3. Heavy convoy escort: yup, battlecruisers are built to do that too. There is a small point in that LACs can cover a greater stretch of space, assuming you're willing to spread them out of mutual support range. On the other hand, MDMs and FTL comms allow for stretching the engagement range by using a ballistic phase. So again, probably a wash.

4. Force projection and flag showing: again, classic battlecruiser mission.