n7axw wrote:Thanks for the nice response. As I am interpreting what you are saying here is that while my earlier thought about bigger ships being more stable as weapons platforms is true but subject to some limitations and is only one of a variety of factors.
I don't have any problems with that. In fact, while aiming cannon from a completely stable ground installation you are still going to have variations that will prevent aiming accurately on a consistant basis from being completely automatic.
Don
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Hi Don,
You are entirely right. Accuracy in naval gunnery is not an either/or, it is a continuum. ICN gunners are the best on Safehold because they aim the gun with sights, and because the gun captain fires the gun when he senses the ship has achieved a desired point in its' constant motion. Larger ships decrease the rolling motion.
PeterZ's gyroscope can move accuracy along the continuum, if it can decrease the degree of error caused by a ship rolling. I would add that PeterZ's gyroscope may be powered and triggered by pnuematic energy, but the transfer of the signal from the gyroscope to the gun, should be hydraulic. Air compresses, and the longer the line, the more compression and resulting signal lag you will get.
Observation balloons move accuracy further along the continuum. Strictly observation alone helps to reduce the degree of both azimuth, and range errors. Using range finders in combination with firing charts will reduce the number of shots required to zero in on the target.
We have not even talked about firing control computers (analog of course). To get the most value out of a firing control computer, the gun turret rotation, and the barrel elevation has to be controlled by the computer.
Could the ICN do all of this. Probably, but not this year. In ATST we will be lucky if we get gyroscopes and range finders.
Regardless of what is not there, what is there will make ICN and ICA guns significantly more accurate than any of their enemies.
James