CLAC Comparrison

Somtaaw wrote:On a slightly aside here, the LAC crews knew they were already doomed, so why did none of them try to accelerate, and deliberately ram a sidewall?

Honor of the Queen, Ch 33 wrote:but the final quartet came on, and an alarm screamed on Lieutenant Ash's panel.

The lieutenant's head whipped around in horror. He had less than a single second to realize that somehow these missiles had been programmed to use his EW systems, as if his decoys were homing beacons, not defenses, and then they rammed headlong into their target.

Two of them vanished in sun-bright fireballs that shook Thunder to her keel as twin, 78-ton hammers struck her sidewall at .25 C . For all their fury, those two were harmless, but their sisters' sidewall penetrators functioned as designed.

Ok, LAC's don't have sidewall penetrators, but an impact from a 78 ton missile at 0.25c with penetrators, and a 20 kton LAC impacting at the same velocity without penetrators, is that not simply a case of finesse (using the considerably smaller, penetrators) and brute force (using an entire LAC) to drop sidewalls?

Rough on the LACs sure, but a handful that deliberately accelerate ahead of the pack and slam into sidewalls to forcibly drop them, doubles the effective range of the Shrike's; and at that range the podnoughts wouldn't be able to roll before the light-speed grasers had already arrived and savaged them.

1. The LAC has to cross the entire energy weapon envelope. That includes the point defense laser clusters. A Havenite SD(P) is going to have a lot of highly motivated crews trying to shoot down a kamikaze.

2. A LAC wedge is far larger than any missile, and it has to thread the needle between the target's upper and lower wedge planes. Even a modest roll by the target would interdict the LAC's wedge and blow it up.

Essentially, as much as LACs can accelerate, they still are considerably slower than missiles. That gives the target enough time to react.

Potato wrote:1. The LAC has to cross the entire energy weapon envelope. That includes the point defense laser clusters. A Havenite SD(P) is going to have a lot of highly motivated crews trying to shoot down a kamikaze.

2. A LAC wedge is far larger than any missile, and it has to thread the needle between the target's upper and lower wedge planes. Even a modest roll by the target would interdict the LAC's wedge and blow it up.

Essentially, as much as LACs can accelerate, they still are considerably slower than missiles. That gives the target enough time to react.

That was basically my thought - though I went back and did some checks to make sure the LAC's wedge could fit at all.


We know from the Wedge Size thread (back in July) that the Shrikes have a 41 or 42 km square wedge. If the same wedge geometry angles apply that hints that the forward opening might be as much as 27 km tall.
That's short enough to fit between the planes of an SD's wedge (min clearance is 40 km); but it's a very tight fight and you'd be flying nose on straight down it's grasers

I don't remember Shrikes getting refit with buckler walls, so they'd seem to have to choose between accelerating and keeping their bow wall up. If the bow wall is down even PDLCs can chew it apart before wedge impact - if the bow wall is up the SD's graser can still punch through it, and you spend longer on approach.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Potato wrote:1. The LAC has to cross the entire energy weapon envelope. That includes the point defense laser clusters. A Havenite SD(P) is going to have a lot of highly motivated crews trying to shoot down a kamikaze.

2. A LAC wedge is far larger than any missile, and it has to thread the needle between the target's upper and lower wedge planes. Even a modest roll by the target would interdict the LAC's wedge and blow it up.

Essentially, as much as LACs can accelerate, they still are considerably slower than missiles. That gives the target enough time to react.

That was basically my thought - though I went back and did some checks to make sure the LAC's wedge could fit at all.


We know from the Wedge Size thread (back in July) that the Shrikes have a 41 or 42 km square wedge. If the same wedge geometry angles apply that hints that the forward opening might be as much as 27 km tall.
That's short enough to fit between the planes of an SD's wedge (min clearance is 40 km); but it's a very tight fight and you'd be flying nose on straight down it's grasers

I don't remember Shrikes getting refit with buckler walls, so they'd seem to have to choose between accelerating and keeping their bow wall up. If the bow wall is down even PDLCs can chew it apart before wedge impact - if the bow wall is up the SD's graser can still punch through it, and you spend longer on approach.

During BoMa, the Shrikes (and what surviving Ferrets got past the screen), crossed the podnoughts energy envelope in mere seconds, so they had a combined approach velocity nearing that of terminal range MDM's. So each and every podnought would have had one shot per graser, and even PDLC's wouldn't have gotten off more than two, perhaps 3 shots each.

At All Costs, Battle of Manticore wrote:"I know," DeLaney said. "But I'm a little concerned about their LACs. We've got twenty-three hundred of them still coming in on us,"
-snipped-
But in its destruction, Second Fleet's screen had done its job. The LACs which survived the exchange were a broken force, streaming through and past Tourville's surviving superdreadnoughts so rapidly not even the Shrikes had time to inflict significant damage on such massively armored targets. Not without numbers they no longer had.
-snipped-
"It looks like only about two hundred of their LACs got away," his chief of staff said. "The wall's energy weapons managed to nail most of the others as they crossed our vector."

2300 LAC's to attack Second Fleets 124 surviving podnoughts (had been 240 before Home Fleet shot their bolt). They savaged Second Fleet's screen which was 33 battlecruisers, 41 heavy cruisers and 2700 Cimeterre-Alpha's and -Beta's,

By the wording "nail most of the others as they crossed our vector", would suggest that most of the Shrike's died after crossing the podnoughts vector and most didn't have stern walls to try to interdict fire. But 200 LAC's, with some willing to charge ahead even faster to drop sidewalls on a handful of podnoughts could have guaranteed some kills, versus achieving nothing except having killed the screen with little to no damage on the podnoughts.


Of course, we're now starting to drift, but based on my original math logic, for successful LAC attacks, Home Fleet was woefully undersupplied with LAC's. I can't find any hard data on how many were with D'Orville prior to

Home Fleet's LAC screen had suffered massive losses of its own, mostly from MDMs which had lost their original targets and taken whatever they could find in exchange. Despite that, over two thousand of them survived
-snip-
More LACs were still streaming towards Second Fleet from the inner system, as well,

But even with say 75% casualties, that they went to individually attack Second Fleet with a mere 2300, which started with 2000 indicates Home Fleet only had about 3000 LAC's to start, which means they only had around 25 carriers to go with 42 podnoughts and 48 SD's. By my math logic, Home Fleet needed at least double the CLAC's for a proper fleet not including the LAC's that should have been there from the orbital platforms.


Podnoughts are definitely scary, but all the battles showing exactly how effective LAC's can be, seem to show that all of them are using about 50% of what I reckon to be minimum viable. Sure, they're getting some fairly superb results in the missile defense role, but doubling your LAC count would increase your missile defense by a factor of four and that's assuming only fielding Shrike-B's and Ferrets.

Somtaaw wrote:During BoMa, the Shrikes (and what surviving Ferrets got past the screen), crossed the podnoughts energy envelope in mere seconds, so they had a combined approach velocity nearing that of terminal range MDM's. So each and every podnought would have had one shot per graser, and even PDLC's wouldn't have gotten off more than two, perhaps 3 shots .

Which was enough to kill 90% of the LACs that got that far.

Somtaaw wrote:During BoMa, the Shrikes (and what surviving Ferrets got past the screen), crossed the podnoughts energy envelope in mere seconds, so they had a combined approach velocity nearing that of terminal range MDM's. So each and every podnought would have had one shot per graser, and even PDLC's wouldn't have gotten off more than two, perhaps 3 shots .

Hmm I wonder how early those Shrikes would have had to commit to a suicide run to get the ear perfect straight in vector it would take to reach the sidewalls (even if the targeted SD(P)s didn't manouver)

The leading edge was of the LAC's wedge had to penetrate 140 km inside the tunnel off the tsrgrt's wedge before it hits sidewall. And if you drift up or down by even 30 or so km you clip the SD's wedge and go poof - converting into a ball of plasma that the sidewalls will shrug off.

That's a much more narrowly confined vector than simply passing within, say, a quarter million km of the target... If you'd been lined up for a flyby until you got savaged btly the screen there probably isn't enough delta-v to realign for a ramming attack...

Just to point out weight of an LAC doesn't make any difference to how many can be carried, that would be a displacement, physical size, constraint. inside a compensation field nothing weights anything. Manty new LAC are About 20-22 metres wide and tall and 63-65 metres long. Cubic metres matter weight in tons is meaningless for a LAC bay. A 25-30 x 25-30 x 70-75 metre bay per LAC will be needed. For Shrike Ferret Katana LAC. One then calculates the Angle of the docking bay and the innermost size and relation to other bays in a round ship. Flatten the sides and it matters less. Bulkhead width, hallways access and armament reload access to the bays etc...

A CLAC size is determined not by its outer size but by its inner most diameter in a round sided ship. Flat sided or stacked flat and staggered raising the tonnage by two million won't make much more space for bays.

Now if you want bigger better CLAC you can just use the Fast Freighters, Honor had 60 pretending to be SD(P), use modular LAC bays and Re arming bays 60 new big CLAC are already built and can be churned out in no time. No Building slips used at all. Given that there aren't any right now, Bob's your Uncle and he has 60 SD sized Military wedged fast CLAC.

Of note bigger CLAC may not increase numbers of LAC bays dramatically, in current configuration, but would allow for longer LAC's to be docked. Docking LAC longitudinally would allow for radical number increases. Get a coffee can and put a number of short pencils in it sideways. Then put two or three times as many in standing them upright.