BC(C) (Spoiler Within)

Relax wrote:.

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".

Though as you know (but some of the posters who didn't get sucked into the last rounds of these debates might not) is you have to be careful comparing LAC tonnage to ship tonnage. Warships all have pretty similarly densities (thanks to the great resizing). So a ship with twice the tonnage has twice the volume. But LACs are much denser. So when though 2 Shrikes mass more than a basic dispatch boat; their combined volume is still noticeably less.

I suspect even once you include the less dense docking bay areas neccesary to carry a LAC that 3.2 moons of LACs takes up less than 50% the volume of a 6.4 moon hull. (Though they do take up the vast majority of the space between the hull tapers)

Part of what makes modern LACs great systems is that they are harder to see and target by missiles. That is why you can deploy them, if not directly in the potential path of incoming weapons, you can put them just outside it and they can "thin out" a given salvo well outside the CM range and energy counter measure range of your own capital ships. Reduce the number of missles you have to destroy with the capital ship CM and energy weapons and you improve the chances of your larger ship dealing with the rest.

The engagement interval for your forward deployed LACs against any given salvo is short it is there and then they go after the next salvo. Mostly the enemy's tactical computers are not going to target the LACs and, again mostly, the sensors on the missles are not going to drop the targeting on the larger ships that are thier designated targets so the LACs are sniping at the weapons heading for the starships and mostly not defending themselves.

Given the numbers of LACs forward deployed for coutnter missile defence against Fillerta, the number of LACs destoyed is almost absurdly small except that 1) they were not the intended targets, 2) they were specifically not standing right in the path of the tsunami of SLN missiles and 3) they are extreemly hard for even starship tactical systems to see and target, let alone the seeker heads of the missles that were their targets.

I didn't go back and look but I think the number of LACs destroyed was 200. What they did do was cut back the number of missiles from essentialy a "flush your magazines at maximum rate along with all those pods" move created by the Malignment's nanite weapon using the SLN's GoToHell program.
That was probably the most deadly situation the LACs could have been facing because I don't think the final targeting instructions and then updates were going to be very good and a lot of those missles were probably sent out with very poor information and a lot of interference comming at them from the Dazzlers etc from both RMN and RHN ECM so they would have been loosing lock on any initial targets very early in thier flights and start looking for something to hit. Otherwise, the SLN weapons would have been more single-mindedly looking at specific targets and not noticing something as small and stealthy as the LACs.

When you turn on your gigawatt scale fire control arrays to direct the CMs at a range of millions of KM you become very visible.

The League Navy doesn't fully realize just how powerful Alliance/Havenite LAC's are. Yes, Honor informed Filareta, but that was literally seconds before the nanite-agent Omega-Launched the full pod loadout, and blew Filareta's flag bridge up. So even if he'd fully grasped what Honor was bluntly telling him, he's dead and so was everyone else who heard it, and everybody who may have seen those LAC's in action are dead, or POW's.


That means zero missiles were targetted on the LAC's at all, and odds that the missiles weren't even configured to truly consider one of the LAC's as an appropriate alternate target. Only the absolutely most blinded missiles would have tried going after a LAC, and the tiny LAC casualties were either because the LAC's got a little too close to a missile before it detonates, or accidentally got in the way of a graser (unlikely, but still possible).


And with Battle Fleet's superiority complex, anybody who engages LAC's and manages to escape is going to be dismissed as alarmist, and inflating the threat rating to excuse their cowardice. Which puts the entire League Navy in exactly the same place the People's Navy was after Second Hancock and pre-Buttercup, with even less reason to think that way.

One wonders if carriers will be as useful in the near future as they had been in the Havenite Wars. Sure they will be very helpful to move LACs from place to place, but LACs acting as systems defense systems against SLN BCs will be in very great demand.

As I see it, 10 LACs crewed by ~100 people is a match for any 1-2 BCs in the SLN inventory. An LAC Wing composed of Katanas and Shrike Bs backed by missile pods is good for defending against at least 2-3 squadrons of BCs, likely more if handled correctly.

So, newly aligned Verge systems will need LACs for systems defense. Carriers will be used to ferry wings of LACs about. Converted freighters or upgraded local space stations can manage repairs. Armed auxiliary cruisers like the Wayfarer can bring resupply. That means for the investment of 1,000 RMN personnel and an LAC wing, the SLN has to commit at least 120,000 people and 3 squadrons of BCs. Attacking the SEM commercial empire will take 120 times more people to attack than to defend and lord knows how many times more material wealth.

This would also allow the RMN to concentrate their hyper capable war ships to attack SLN bases in the Protectorates and Verge. I don't see how the League can sustain commerce warfare with that sort of cost imbalance even for a year or two. As the RMN strikes ever deeper into the League, the SLN has to draw their BCs away from commerce raiding and deploy them to systems protection as their SDs will have been destroyed by the RMN advance.

The Protectorates will see seeking independence as a pretty safe risk under those circumstances, no matter how much the League would like to make examples of those systems.

So, why focus on new types of smaller combat capable carriers at all?

Somtaaw wrote:And with Battle Fleet's superiority complex, anybody who engages LAC's and manages to escape is going to be dismissed as alarmist, and inflating the threat rating to excuse their cowardice. Which puts the entire League Navy in exactly the same place the People's Navy was after Second Hancock and pre-Buttercup, with even less reason to think that way.

"I tell you that thing's grazer was so big it lit up our rad screens after punching clean through Levee!"

"A LAC with a grazer, how absurd"

Flags down bartender, "Can you play this chip?"

Bar gets raided by SLN security forces the next day