So now that we are through the manditory filler books.....

Dauntless wrote:been a while since i reread shadow of sagnami but i don't recall the trio of monican (ex SLN) BC really catching terekov etc unaware.

after all hexapuma did mange to use much of her extended range against them.

Didn't catch Terekhov unaware, The 3 BCs caught a CIC tech off guard. (S)he reported a sensor ghost to ATO which happened to be Helen Z. who declared it not a ghost but a pretty good attempt to play

hole in space

. "Ghost rider drones don't do ghosts. Its either there or it is not. "

After the capture of Bing's BCs, and certainly after capture of Crandall's SDs there are no surprises on SL stealth or EW.

Basically the SLN needs to retire everyone above the rank of commodore and start all over again from scratch starting with "doctrine"? Seriously, the ships go when the helmsman steps on the hydrogen pedal, but otherwise they are useless as combat units.

Their sensor hardware is almost acceptable, but the computers and software suck. Missile systems, CMs Ew drones, all below OBS standards. Well, except for the new Technodyne DDMs which the SLN originally rejected.

WeirdlyWired wrote:Basically the SLN needs to retire everyone above the rank of commodore and start all over again from scratch starting with "doctrine"? Seriously, the ships go when the helmsman steps on the hydrogen pedal, but otherwise they are useless as combat units.

Their sensor hardware is almost acceptable, but the computers and software suck. Missile systems, CMs Ew drones, all below OBS standards. Well, except for the new Technodyne DDMs which the SLN originally rejected.

Eh, surprisingly their SDMs have better drives than anything we saw out of Haven or Manticore up until the ERMs and MDMs.

The sensors, and ECM, packages on the missiles may suck (and the less said about the pathetic launcher cycle-times the better) but there's nothing wrong with their drives; those are 12% higher performance than the OBS-era missiles and still 3.5% better than the 1910PD era RMN capital missiles.

I wasn't fond of SoV until I realized what David's scope was intended to be, and even now I am sort of "meh..." about it, and expanding on one post in this alluded to part of why the SLN tech now totally sucks vs. the RMN...

The RMN has literally been reading the manuals on every facet of SLN electronic counter-measures, etc. with the capture of both battle fleet and FF ships. I think RFC referred to in one of the latter books as (paraphrase) instead of acting as a countermeasure, the SLN bag of tricks acts as homing / targeting beacons to attacking Manticoran missiles as programmed by the parent warship.

Which means that a force as small as two Rolands with Mk16g's can now likely take out a Solarian SD without breaking too much of a sweat. So what else can David do other than to expand the canvas? which to us just seems like filler.

SharkHunter wrote:I wasn't fond of SoV until I realized what David's scope was intended to be, and even now I am sort of "meh..." about it, and expanding on one post in this alluded to part of why the SLN tech now totally sucks vs. the RMN...

The RMN has literally been reading the manuals on every facet of SLN electronic counter-measures, etc. with the capture of both battle fleet and FF ships. I think RFC referred to in one of the latter books as (paraphrase) instead of acting as a countermeasure, the SLN bag of tricks acts as homing / targeting beacons to attacking Manticoran missiles as programmed by the parent warship.

Which means that a force as small as two Rolands with Mk16g's can now likely take out a Solarian SD without breaking too much of a sweat. So what else can David do other than to expand the canvas? which to us just seems like filler.

Yep. It's been evident ever since Saltash, when a few Rolands completely blew away four BCs. My estimate is that a Solly SD will be dead after 150 capital missile hits(RHN SD(P)s were mentioned to be mission-killed or dead after 250 hits).

With the MK-16 mod-G, a single Roland can do this to a Solly SD in twelve or fifteen salvos, especially with the captured data turning SLN ECM systems into homing beacons.

This is the most pointless start to a thread. Just how does 'story' become 'filler'?

Maybe we could have "Honor progresses from child to Fleet Admiral, has a few adventures on the way, fights the Peoples Republic of Haven and discovers the Meson Alignment. Oh. a lot of good people join her and they track down the Alignment's base and have a big battle."

Well that sure 'progressed the main story' It was rubbish writing and no-one would buy it.

How do people get off rubbishing great writing? (not mine) This fantastic book adds satisfying details and conclusions to a lot of questions that were left up in the air after ART, COG and SOF. It also contains one of the best battle descriptions in the series. Scottie Tremaine v Admiral Tamoguchi. Brilliant!

martin wrote:It also contains one of the best battle descriptions in the series. Scottie Tremaine v Admiral Tamoguchi. Brilliant!

As long as you pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Like how does a 20,000 some ton LACs tow 1.5 million tons worth of pods? It's like you in rowboat towing the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.

The missiles were fired from pods at the same time so you have essentially a 2D grid of missiles whose z axis is pointing at the RMN and are approaching at quite a significant rate. To hit more than one missile you have to pass through the grid multiple times or approach the grid from the x or y axis. Which the Mk23s do not.

So essentially you can possibly kill one missile in each pattern with each Mk23. So with 72 missiles you get to kill 576 incoming missiles if you get one in each pattern. Which is more than a bit questionable due to the crappy sensors in MDMs.

Remember how in the awful book we have this ""They can't be serious," Spiropoulo said in exasperation as every single impeller signature disappeared simultaneously from her plot, six minues after launch."..."They blazed in across the remaining distance, tracking with clean, lethal precision, and their ballistic flight had dropped them off of the Republic's sensors. Chin's ships knew approximately where they were, but not exactly, and their supporting EW platforms and penetration aids came up with their impellers."

Missile sensors suck compared to ship sensors. Missile wedges are also small compared to CM wedges. but they are not tiny and need to be well separated to avoid fratricide (as it has been clearly stated that pre-apollo missiles do not talk to other missiles in the salvo, they need to have enough time (which is distance) to detect and maneuver to avoid other missiles maneuvering. So this will be at least 200% of the diameter of the wedge.

But no, they got 400 plus in each wave with 72 missiles.

So yeah, more the patented war porn that David has come to love.

kzt wrote:

martin wrote:It also contains one of the best battle descriptions in the series. Scottie Tremaine v Admiral Tamoguchi. Brilliant!

As long as you pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Like how does a 20,000 some ton LACs tow 1.5 million tons worth of pods? It's like you in rowboat towing the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.

The missiles were fired from pods at the same time so you have essentially a 2D grid of missiles whose z axis is pointing at the RMN and are approaching at quite a significant rate. To hit more than one missile you have to pass through the grid multiple times or approach the grid from the x or y axis. Which the Mk23s do not.

So essentially you can possibly kill one missile in each pattern with each Mk23. So with 72 missiles you get to kill 576 incoming missiles if you get one in each pattern. Which is more than a bit questionable due to the crappy sensors in MDMs.

Remember how in the awful book we have this ""They can't be serious," Spiropoulo said in exasperation as every single impeller signature disappeared simultaneously from her plot, six minues after launch."..."They blazed in across the remaining distance, tracking with clean, lethal precision, and their ballistic flight had dropped them off of the Republic's sensors. Chin's ships knew approximately where they were, but not exactly, and their supporting EW platforms and penetration aids came up with their impellers."

Missile sensors suck compared to ship sensors. Missile wedges are also small compared to CM wedges. but they are not tiny and need to be well separated to avoid fratricide (as it has been clearly stated that pre-apollo missiles do not talk to other missiles in the salvo, they need to have enough time (which is distance) to detect and maneuver to avoid other missiles maneuvering. So this will be at least 200% of the diameter of the wedge.

But no, they got 400 plus in each wave with 72 missiles.

So yeah, more the patented war porn that David has come to love.

In the wedge size thread (and in text) a missile wedge is 10 km long and wide. If you figure that missiles are programmed to attempt to fly 15 km away from each other's programmed positions to avoid fratricide, an opposing missile can pass between 2 missiles, with 2.5 km of clearance on all sides.

This 5 km separation is just a WAG, but some clearance is necessary so adjacent missiles rarely collide, and virtually any clearance will guarantee it impossible to hit 2 missiles with 1 cm, unless some of the missiles have delayed launches, placing their flight paths behind other missiles.

However, this is assuming 1 ship launching the missiles, since the ships in a formation are in a 3d matrix, their launch would be similarly laid out, in a cloud of wedges, making it possible for a cm to take out multiple missiles. However, most likely it would require maneuvering to intercept each additional target, greatly complicating the job. I doubt the average missile in cm role could intercept more than 2 missiles in each launch, unless the missiles were sent in one continuous stream.

kzt wrote:

martin wrote:It also contains one of the best battle descriptions in the series. Scottie Tremaine v Admiral Tamoguchi. Brilliant!

As long as you pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Like how does a 20,000 some ton LACs tow 1.5 million tons worth of pods? It's like you in rowboat towing the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.

The missiles were fired from pods at the same time so you have essentially a 2D grid of missiles whose z axis is pointing at the RMN and are approaching at quite a significant rate. To hit more than one missile you have to pass through the grid multiple times or approach the grid from the x or y axis. Which the Mk23s do not.

So essentially you can possibly kill one missile in each pattern with each Mk23. So with 72 missiles you get to kill 576 incoming missiles if you get one in each pattern. Which is more than a bit questionable due to the crappy sensors in MDMs.

Remember how in the awful book we have this ""They can't be serious," Spiropoulo said in exasperation as every single impeller signature disappeared simultaneously from her plot, six minues after launch."..."They blazed in across the remaining distance, tracking with clean, lethal precision, and their ballistic flight had dropped them off of the Republic's sensors. Chin's ships knew approximately where they were, but not exactly, and their supporting EW platforms and penetration aids came up with their impellers."

Missile sensors suck compared to ship sensors. Missile wedges are also small compared to CM wedges. but they are not tiny and need to be well separated to avoid fratricide (as it has been clearly stated that pre-apollo missiles do not talk to other missiles in the salvo, they need to have enough time (which is distance) to detect and maneuver to avoid other missiles maneuvering. So this will be at least 200% of the diameter of the wedge.

But no, they got 400 plus in each wave with 72 missiles.

So yeah, more the patented war porn that David has come to love.

72 Mk 23s with their wedges up, a few kilometres wide, closely 'clumped and following their mk23E launched on a well observed trajectory adjusted by recon drones. where is the problem? Sure sone will slip thru the gaps but there were 3 barricade launches.

And the LACs don't tow any pods. The LACs are for missile defence. The Charles Ward dropped off the missiles and those 4 UMV distribution units handled them. Each could stow up to 300 pods.

In my eArc they are towing the million and a half ton unit.

And no, they were rapidly fired, and couldn't get corrections from the SLN ships. Since missiles don't talk to each other (another of the miracle "breakthroughs" of Apollo) each missile needs to SEE the target. So they essentially need to be in a single flat plane so their sensors are not blocked by the wedges of the missiles in front. As the missiles maneuver slightly and autonomously the missiles wedges need to be far enough from the other missiles so they not collide and far enough that the other missiles around them can maneuver to avoid them without colliding with the rest of the salvo.

So assume twice the missile wedge size, or 10 km between wedges. That means you need a wedge 20 km wide to get more than 1 missile. Nope, not gonna happen.