BC(C) (Spoiler Within)

ldwechsler wrote: The key thing to remember is that there are a real lot of LACs. We've heard of sending out thousands. Each of the LACs does have a limited number of missiles but nothing says they have to fire them all at once.

After all, if a thousand missiles are being sent in a salvo at Manticore ships, 1000 LACs could each send out one, maybe two countermissiles. Remember that even the SD(P)'s have a limited capacity.

This works particularly well when the ships themselves have very good countermeasures and are tossing a real lot of missiles, particularly if they are more or less out of range of the enemy.

Sending 10,000 countermissiles after 1000 missiles is a waste. I would guess Tac officers would quickly learn this in war games and that there are computer controls to handle distribution.

Note also that if the enemy's ships start to blow up, there are fewer missiles coming at you.

It really doesn't matter how many missiles each LAC has internally when they are EACH towing the entire pod core of a SD(P).

One does kind of wonder how they are supposed to start the pod reactors, but that's pretty far down the stack of reasons this is absurd.

Jonathan_S wrote:Well yes, but I still view the CUMV(L) and it's 300 pods; not to mention a LACs ability to tow one at high speed while still being stealthy, with massive disbelief

kzt wrote:Well, if you could have your LACs each sneak the entire payload of a SD(P) into a few light seconds of your target it does simplify the fleet defense situation. The RMN fleet side anyhow.

ldwechsler wrote:The key thing to remember is that there are a real lot of LACs. We've heard of sending out thousands. Each of the LACs does have a limited number of missiles but nothing says they have to fire them all at once.

After all, if a thousand missiles are being sent in a salvo at Manticore ships, 1000 LACs could each send out one, maybe two countermissiles. Remember that even the SD(P)'s have a limited capacity.

This works particularly well when the ships themselves have very good countermeasures and are tossing a real lot of missiles, particularly if they are more or less out of range of the enemy.

Sending 10,000 countermissiles after 1000 missiles is a waste. I would guess Tac officers would quickly learn this in war games and that there are computer controls to handle distribution.

Note also that if the enemy's ships start to blow up, there are fewer missiles coming at you.

This was sort of the strategy at Manticore II (aka Fillareta's Folly). In the battle that's being discussed, though, there are only 8 LACs in the screening role. Assuming that they can take out 10 incoming missiles with a combination of counter-missiles and PDLC (do LACs even have PDLCs?) that's going to thin out the wave, but no way is it going to clear it up.

The thing that bothers me about this is that I can't figure out how they're going to roll a bunch of pods and line them up nice and pretty while the ship is under acceleration. Having to quit accelerating while you're lining up your pods seems to not be the best tactics.

Or maybe I'm missing something about how the impeller drive works?

One thing about that battle that I haven't seen addressed before: Admiral what's-his-name (the Solly admiral) was very specific that the only reason he engaged was to get data on Manticoran capabilities to send back home.

So why didn't he detach a pair of destroyers to hold back, watch and then skedaddle into hyper with the data once they found that the battle had gone badly for him?

Doesn't seem like good contingency planning, and if Admiral Tremaine had wanted the information sequestered, sending two destroyers off in different directions would make it pretty difficult.

JohnRoth wrote:This was sort of the strategy at Manticore II (aka Fillareta's Folly). In the battle that's being discussed, though, there are only 8 LACs in the screening role. Assuming that they can take out 10 incoming missiles with a combination of counter-missiles and PDLC (do LACs even have PDLCs?) that's going to thin out the wave, but no way is it going to clear it up.
<Snip>

Shrike B's have 6 PDLCs and 4 high speed CMs mounted fore and aft. They have the counter missile capability of a pre- war destroyer

JohnRoth wrote:So why didn't he detach a pair of destroyers to hold back, watch and then skedaddle into hyper with the data once they found that the battle had gone badly for him?

The whole thing is insane.

Apologies in advanced if this has been asked somewhere in these 11 pages. I haven't had the time to read it all yet.

Why does a Carrier have to be an SD or DN sized ship? Furhter, why would you have to modify a BC into something it wasn't originally designed to do (except chase things down and raid). In WWII, not all carriers were the same size or class. Escort and Medium Carriers were made in mass numbers to supplement the larger carriers that we know and love like the Yorktown-class carrier. An escort class example is the Casablanca-class and a light carrier would be an Independence-class.

With Manticore losing time trying to rebuild its space industrial base, wouldn't it be more prudent to develop and mass produce these smaller Carrier variants than only focusing on SD-sized ships? When they do get their industry back up and running, they're going to be in a similar boat to when they were gearing up against Haven. They will need ships and lots of them. IIRC that was why they had more DNs made and in service than any other "modern" power in relation to SDs. How is Manticore's situation now different from their situation against Haven at the start of the series?

SouthernWolf wrote:Apologies in advanced if this has been asked somewhere in these 11 pages. I haven't had the time to read it all yet.

Why does a Carrier have to be an SD or DN sized ship? Furhter, why would you have to modify a BC into something it wasn't originally designed to do (except chase things down and raid). In WWII, not all carriers were the same size or class. Escort and Medium Carriers were made in mass numbers to supplement the larger carriers that we know and love like the Yorktown-class carrier. An escort class example is the Casablanca-class and a light carrier would be an Independence-class.

With Manticore losing time trying to rebuild its space industrial base, wouldn't it be more prudent to develop and mass produce these smaller Carrier variants than only focusing on SD-sized ships? When they do get their industry back up and running, they're going to be in a similar boat to when they were gearing up against Haven. They will need ships and lots of them. IIRC that was why they had more DNs made and in service than any other "modern" power in relation to SDs. How is Manticore's situation now different from their situation against Haven at the start of the series?

At a strict technical level, it's all about hull volume. A battlecruiser wouldn't have a lot of space to incorporate a meaningful number of LAC hangers and space for all the necessary little bits that make a spaceship work. Additionally, comparing to a WWII converted carrier doesn't really work. Most of those conversions happened midway through construction (such as the Independence-class), not on a post-hoc basis. Doing that conversion after the ship has been completed and commissioned is in effect building an entirely new ship. At which point you'd just go ahead, save yourself the cruiser, and build a new carrier.

SouthernWolf wrote:Apologies in advanced if this has been asked somewhere in these 11 pages. I haven't had the time to read it all yet.

Why does a Carrier have to be an SD or DN sized ship? Furhter, why would you have to modify a BC into something it wasn't originally designed to do (except chase things down and raid). In WWII, not all carriers were the same size or class. Escort and Medium Carriers were made in mass numbers to supplement the larger carriers that we know and love like the Yorktown-class carrier. An escort class example is the Casablanca-class and a light carrier would be an Independence-class.

With Manticore losing time trying to rebuild its space industrial base, wouldn't it be more prudent to develop and mass produce these smaller Carrier variants than only focusing on SD-sized ships? When they do get their industry back up and running, they're going to be in a similar boat to when they were gearing up against Haven. They will need ships and lots of them. IIRC that was why they had more DNs made and in service than any other "modern" power in relation to SDs. How is Manticore's situation now different from their situation against Haven at the start of the series?

To elaborate on what Duckk said if you look at the length of a LAC, how they dock, and the max beam of the RMNs current CLACs you can see that even on a DN sized hull it's a tight squeeze. Just the LACs alone add up to 81% of the hull width. Throw in LAC bay doors, docking buffers, etc and you've probably only got 15 meters or less for ship equipment and passageways between the port and starboard bays.

Shrink the ship much and your LACs carried goes down drastically.

Plus it would be easy to buy full sized CLACs from Haven. The carriers aren't really the high tech part, the LACs are.

Jonathan_S wrote:

SouthernWolf wrote:Apologies in advanced if this has been asked somewhere in these 11 pages. I haven't had the time to read it all yet.

Why does a Carrier have to be an SD or DN sized ship? Furhter, why would you have to modify a BC into something it wasn't originally designed to do (except chase things down and raid). In WWII, not all carriers were the same size or class. Escort and Medium Carriers were made in mass numbers to supplement the larger carriers that we know and love like the Yorktown-class carrier. An escort class example is the Casablanca-class and a light carrier would be an Independence-class.

With Manticore losing time trying to rebuild its space industrial base, wouldn't it be more prudent to develop and mass produce these smaller Carrier variants than only focusing on SD-sized ships? When they do get their industry back up and running, they're going to be in a similar boat to when they were gearing up against Haven. They will need ships and lots of them. IIRC that was why they had more DNs made and in service than any other "modern" power in relation to SDs. How is Manticore's situation now different from their situation against Haven at the start of the series?

To elaborate on what Duckk said if you look at the length of a LAC, how they dock, and the max beam of the RMNs current CLACs you can see that even on a DN sized hull it's a tight squeeze. Just the LACs alone add up to 81% of the hull width. Throw in LAC bay doors, docking buffers, etc and you've probably only got 15 meters or less for ship equipment and passageways between the port and starboard bays.

Shrink the ship much and your LACs carried goes down drastically.

Plus it would be easy to buy full sized CLACs from Haven. The carriers aren't really the high tech part, the LACs are.

Adding to what Jonathan said:

Soutgernwolf, your question has come up repeatedly over the years. As Jonathan said, the issue us the beam of the carrier.

The current Manty CLACs are "fat". Normally, there is a rough ratio between the beam of a ship and it's length, following an optimization of a shape of the compensator field. Jonathan found that RMN CLACs are too wide for the normal ratio, so they are intentionally wider, at the cost of acceleration, to accomodate the LACs and reloading equipment.

Doing some rough calculations, you can do a fat merchie hull (no hammerheads) down to ~4 mtons or so and still have LACs on both broadsides. But you will lose >40% of the LACs in the minimal hull. Smaller than that you would have to have docking on just one side, or or docking laterally, both of which would limit you to fewer than 30 LACs... In a slow, hull which has no armor and few weapons.

It is also important to note, the size and shape of modern lacs is different that older LACs. Current LACs have no hammerheads,and are only ~75m long, despite their 20kton mass. Traditional LACs have hammerheads and are >100m long despite massing in the 10kton range. So anyone taking their current LAC force and attempting to use it with a carrier, would require a carrier 33% wider than the ones used by the RMN.

Duckk wrote:

SouthernWolf wrote:Apologies in advanced if this has been asked somewhere in these 11 pages. I haven't had the time to read it all yet.

Why does a Carrier have to be an SD or DN sized ship? Furhter, why would you have to modify a BC into something it wasn't originally designed to do (except chase things down and raid). In WWII, not all carriers were the same size or class. Escort and Medium Carriers were made in mass numbers to supplement the larger carriers that we know and love like the Yorktown-class carrier. An escort class example is the Casablanca-class and a light carrier would be an Independence-class.

With Manticore losing time trying to rebuild its space industrial base, wouldn't it be more prudent to develop and mass produce these smaller Carrier variants than only focusing on SD-sized ships? When they do get their industry back up and running, they're going to be in a similar boat to when they were gearing up against Haven. They will need ships and lots of them. IIRC that was why they had more DNs made and in service than any other "modern" power in relation to SDs. How is Manticore's situation now different from their situation against Haven at the start of the series?

At a strict technical level, it's all about hull volume. A battlecruiser wouldn't have a lot of space to incorporate a meaningful number of LAC hangers and space for all the necessary little bits that make a spaceship work. Additionally, comparing to a WWII converted carrier doesn't really work. Most of those conversions happened midway through construction (such as the Independence-class), not on a post-hoc basis. Doing that conversion after the ship has been completed and commissioned is in effect building an entirely new ship. At which point you'd just go ahead, save yourself the cruiser, and build a new carrier.

Also LACs would have to come directly out if you weapons mass. Iirc, a LAC and bay mass 34 tons, so a squadron would eat up ~200ktons of a 900kton BCs weapons mass, which would pretty much leave you with a CA's weapons fit, and negating all weapons and defenses, only 10 or so LACs total by mass.

1) LAC's do have hammerheads... sorta. All this means is that unlike a merchant hull which ends @ the impeller, current LAC's have their hull extend the allowable 15% of hull length beyond the impeller. See LAC SHRIKE diagrams in the books or the CD from Mission of Honor or any other recent hard back mainline book.

2) NIT: I believe RFC said 30,000 tons per LAC+support equipment, not 34,000. Either quote is in AAC, or it is in EoH. No idea if this includes the structural bay itself... I am thinking ... YES.

30kton x 108 LAC's ~= 3.2Mtons on a ~6.1Mton hull. Or roughly ~55% LAC, ~30% propulsion(15% each end, mandated from pearls IIRC), and ~15% etc. 15% is ~1Mton. An old BC ~1Mton had a crew of 2400. So, a CLAC can handle the crew size in that "15% etc". In fact the numbers come out nice and "round" and fits into a "nice" little back of envelope, no one will notice handwavium "good enough" for a sci-fi space opera book, or RA geeks, who waste their lives doing this "calculation".

3) LAC
-- + Bay door
-- + docking collar/Missile Loading equipment
== Roughly 80-->85m was my calculation at shortest length if one uses the SHRIKE drawing and makes a few assumptions to shave every last centimeter. The details were typed up thread if you want the justification for the number.