Barricade... Shadows of Victory tech... skip if unread.

kzt wrote:

Theemile wrote:Not to mention 2 LACs towing 600 pods held in 2 carriers/ reloaders can stealthily outpace a second RMN force traveling at ~600gs without being seen and drop the afore mentioned pods BETWEEN the main RMN force and a SLN force it is chasing.

The whole side story was running on 87 octane, unleaded plot.

There was an opportunity for an interesting battle and instead we got war porn. "James, give the natives another taste of the Maxim."

Unfortunately, the book was released hastily, with no editing and proofing, with just that one revision that delayed it for several week. If it had been released as it should have, with more review, the story probably would have been cleaned up and thought out more, with better transitions and fewer plot holes.

With more time and a re-read or 2, it would be changed just like the revision at the end of AAC, where originally Honor used a Hermes Buoy MISSILE in a cell on a missile pod to communicate with Tourville (yes, it would get to his formation with the missiles - then continue to fly past at 3/4ths the speed of light and be useless as a communications device). Unfortunatly, with zero time for that type of catch, we got the book we got.

aairfccha wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:My thought is along the lines of "how would this work against a first line navy?" and... let's say you time it right, could the RMN use attack missiles in boomer mode to take out salvos during a ballistic phase against ANY DDM or MDM missile barrage?

Thoughts?

If your fire control can cope with your missiles wiggling around mid-flight and they can do that without taking out each other, there is no particular reason to limit the use of this concept to missiles in ballistic flight. Hit probability might be lower because the opponent's missiles can maneuver, OTOH the target is bigger (wedge/wedge contact rather than wedge/missile). It would be a one-for-one exchange with attack missiles playing counter missiles and possibly degrading accuracy at the end, but you can start whittling away the missiles coming at you pretty much right after launch. Whether this is worthwhile is a different question.

The other thought is missiles used this way are probably aimed specifically AT the attacking missiles, and any hits would be 1:1 kills as aairfccha mentioned, destroying both the attacker's missiles and the missiles used in barricade due to the wedge interference. However, most of the misses probably do not have the geometry (or re-programmability) to reorient themselves and attack the launching platforms. (remember, missiles in salvos following those which destroy a target many times just trundle off into empty space, ignoring a 2nd target flying 5k Kilometers away from the programmed target).

Only a high end AI like Apollo or a Graser Torp could have a possibility to re-acquire a new target - IF, that is, the geometry is right.

Theemile wrote:
The other thought is missiles used this way are probably aimed specifically AT the attacking missiles, and any hits would be 1:1 kills as aairfccha mentioned, destroying both the attacker's missiles and the missiles used in barricade due to the wedge interference. However, most of the misses probably do not have the geometry (or re-programmability) to reorient themselves and attack the launching platforms. (remember, missiles in salvos following those which destroy a target many times just trundle off into empty space, ignoring a 2nd target flying 5k Kilometers away from the programmed target).

Only a high end AI like Apollo or a Graser Torp could have a possibility to re-acquire a new target - IF, that is, the geometry is right.

Hmm. Assuming you fired at the same time and the missiles have the same accel they'd intercept (or not) half-way between the ships - though that's not 50% of the way through their powered time.

Lets assume they open fire at just under 50 million km, and the engagement time is 470 seconds. They'll intercept at about 25 million km (and 334 seconds; 71% of the flight time between the fleets).

I'd think that's enough time, even allowing for the 1.4 minute lightspeed lag, for the launching ships to update them with the target ship coordinates and targeting information. Mind you, you wouldn't wait and see which missiles failed to intercept, instead about 1 minute before predicted impact you could send a blind update to all missiles retargeting them at a selection of enemy ships. The missiles that achieved wedge intercept will vaporize before getting the update but the survivors will, about 14 seconds after interpenetration, get the update and reorient slightly to engage the targeted ships in another 2 minutes.

(If we upped the engagement to the full 65 million km continuous powered range the intersection would happen at around 50 seconds later, at 382 seconds, but you'd still have 158 seconds of the drive's clock before the 3rd drive burned out.)


So I think the reason navies don't do this isn't because they'd be wasting the MDMs that failed to intercept but because they decided that an MDM is better expended trying to kill a launch platform than to kill a single missile it launched.

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:There's also the fact that the Solarians bunched the missiles to handle the fire control. A first rate power wouldn't need to do that, one missile would at most take out one enemy missile per group.

You literally CANNOT bunch them so they can both see the target and not hit each others wedges as they maneuver.

The bunching was during the ballistic phase.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

kzt wrote:You literally CANNOT bunch them so they can both see the target and not hit each others wedges as they maneuver.

The bunching was during the ballistic phase.

Sure. But why would you even try to bunch them then?

To even try you'd have to keep them very close during the initial wedge drive, then use some kind of reaction thrusters to move them even closer after wedge burnout and finally use those same thrusters to spread them back out to safe minimum separation in order to light the second stage wedges off. (And as far as we've been told only the laserhead lasing rods have thrusters; not the missiles)

It might technically be possible to design a missile that could do that, but what possible benifit would justify that nonsense?

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:There's also the fact that the Solarians bunched the missiles to handle the fire control. A first rate power wouldn't need to do that, one missile would at most take out one enemy missile per group.

You literally CANNOT bunch them so they can both see the target and not hit each others wedges as they maneuver.

(SNIP)

Which also means that an enemy missile passing through the formation on enemy-ship to friendly-ship axis will hit at most one missile. It's extremely hard and requires a ridiculous amount of velocity to match speed with the missile formation and proceed across it perpendicular to the enemy-ship to friendly-ship axis. That will hit multiple missiles, but it requires you accelerate to get out in front of the incoming missiles, then slows to zero and accelerate towards your own ships to match the speed of the missiles and then generate a vector that will cross the missile formation.

As I said, the geometry says this is all plot

You are assuming that the missiles are all on a one plane. IIRC, they were launched from 8 different battlecruisers which were each at a slightly different distance from Tremaine's taskforce. That means the missiles should end up on 8 parallel planes (about 60 missiles each). That means that each barricade missile could sweep more than one missile if they were neatly aligned ("standard dispersal pattern").

Jonathan_S wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:The bunching was during the ballistic phase.

Sure. But why would you even try to bunch them then?

To even try you'd have to keep them very close during the initial wedge drive, then use some kind of reaction thrusters to move them even closer after wedge burnout and finally use those same thrusters to spread them back out to safe minimum separation in order to light the second stage wedges off. (And as far as we've been told only the laserhead lasing rods have thrusters; not the missiles)

It might technically be possible to design a missile that could do that, but what possible benifit would justify that nonsense?

(Bold mine)

If I may interject...

The missiles themselves DO have RCS.* David may not have specified that in any of the books, but it doesn't really make sense to NOT have them. Sure, compared to the Delta-Vee provided by the wedge, their contribution is minimal, but some adjustments ARE made prior to laserhead release (which, of course is AFTER wedge shutdown). This adjustment is a macro adjustment, getting the missile pointed in the general direction of the target, and the fine-tuning is covered by the RCS on the laserheads.

Missiles don't come in on just a single plane, already pointing at the target - their vectors take them all around the target, barring the far side of it, so they may not actually be pointing at the target when the wedge goes down. Obviously, the programming tries as hard as it can to have them pointing at the target before wedge shutdown, but the RCS is there to help in case it's off a bit.

http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/M ... -465724385

The red-outlined rectangles closest to the aft end, and the cross-shaped bit near the forward end are the RCS thrusters. These are just basic placeholders currently, until we can come up with a design that looks both plausible and aesthetically pleasing.

*Edit to add: At least, for RMN missiles, as that's all we have "done" at the moment.

Loren Pechtel wrote:The bunching was during the ballistic phase.

So when their wedges turn back on they all destroy each other because they all inside each other's wedges? And how do you propose they even get there? Their wedges will have interacted and destroyed them all during the first boost phase.

They also NEED to see their target when the ballistic phase stops, see the maneuver 5th fleet did to avoid the ballistic missiles from 8th fleet at BoM, which just moved them out of the field of view of the warheads. Unless you assume that the RHN, having fought the RMN for the better part of two decades doesn't have a clue how RMN seekers work or that SLN seekers are vastly better then RMN ones.

It just makes no sense.

The LACs each stealthily towing the equivalent of a BC(L) at 600g is yet another piece of insanity, particularity as David once upon a time stated they could only tow 2 pods max and they would cripple both their acceleration and stealth.

Maybe I missed something, but I didn't think that the LACs were towing the modules so much as "keeping station with them" / acting as holes in space in the meantime -- to act mostly as FAC. (forward controllers), that is, Scotty's whole strategy was to maneuver in such a way that the Solarian's walked into the ambush. Meaning that all the LACs had to do was essentially use their added power as tractoring, not towing.

My read was that the LACS, etc. Ginger's ship's etc. started outbound much earlier, and Scotty's ships basically caught up with them at the worst possible time for Tamaguchi's closing force.

Did I miss it?

SharkHunter wrote:Maybe I missed something, but I didn't think that the LACs were towing the modules so much as "keeping station with them" / acting as holes in space in the meantime -- to act mostly as FAC. (forward controllers), that is, Scotty's whole strategy was to maneuver in such a way that the Solarian's walked into the ambush. Meaning that all the LACs had to do was essentially use their added power as tractoring, not towing.

My read was that the LACS, etc. Ginger's ship's etc. started outbound much earlier, and Scotty's ships basically caught up with them at the worst possible time for Tamaguchi's closing force.

Did I miss it?

I just skimmed that section earlier today. The RMN cruisers were accelerating fairly hard, around or over 600 gees chasing the SLN BCs towards the far hyper limit. The LACs popped out of stealth even closer to the enemy than the cruisers - so even if they got dropped very early they still had to crack on the accel to stay ahead of the cruisers - while towing the thing holding 300 MDM pods.

Yes the SLN units did reverse accel back towards the RMN cruisers when Ginger and the DDs and CL broke away and headed back to the hyper limit -- but not by enough to significantly reduce the accel the LACs needed.