MDM light cruiser - just a Saganami-C without armor?

Atticus_of_Amber wrote:I know there was some confusion about the new Avalon class CL and that we now know they aren't an MDM design. I know people are saying you can't build an MDM CL because you can't fit a broadside of MDMS into something that small. But just bear with me here.

Take a Saganami-C. Now remove the armor. What do you have? A light cruiser (a heavy cruiser is armored, a light cruiser isn't; CLs have broadside grasers, DDs don't). Maybe take a missile tube and a graser out of each broadside to make it a little smaller. Admittedly, it's f*cking huge by CL standards, but it's still functionally a CL. Let's call it the Atticus.

What does the Atticus give you? Well it's much faster for a start - lower mass means a higher accel given the same compensator. But maybe you don't need all that extra accel, so you can put some of that removed mass back in as other things. Like extra life support so you can carry a larger marine complement (say TWO companies vs the Sag-C's one).

So now what do you have? What you have is an MDM equivalent of the classic CL - a reasonable endurance, fast but unarmored ship with an excellent marine complement (basically a short battalion) that is perfect for anti-piracy and commerce raiding work. And, when your enemies don't have MDMs and thus don't have the range to hit you, it's actually a more flexible (but less powerful) "space superiority platform" than a Sag-C.

IMHO, the "Atticus" is a better light ship than the Roland DD. The Roland is awesome, but it runs dry fast and it has NO marine complement. That makes it a terribly inflexible platform that really isn't suited to anti-piracy work and also runs into trouble if its task actually requires boots on the ground (cough-Saltash-cough). An Atticus fixes these problems.

So, why am I wrong?

Atticus_of_Amber wrote:What does the Atticus give you? Well it's much faster for a start - lower mass means a higher accel given the same compensator. But maybe you don't need all that extra accel, so you can put some of that removed mass back in as other things. Like extra life support so you can carry a larger marine complement (say TWO companies vs the Sag-C's one).

...

So, why am I wrong?

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:Basically, your Atticus class is heavy cruiser design that replaces missile tubes (and storage) with marine quarters (it will still be armed with DDMs).

Weird Harold wrote:

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:Basically, your Atticus class is heavy cruiser design that replaces missile tubes (and storage) with marine quarters (it will still be armed with DDMs).

DDMs (Mk-16Gs) are still a lot better than the ERMs/LERMs of the Avalon class.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:

Atticus_of_Amber wrote:I know there was some confusion about the new Avalon class CL and that we now know they aren't an MDM design. I know people are saying you can't build an MDM CL because you can't fit a broadside of MDMS into something that small. But just bear with me here.

Take a Saganami-C. Now remove the armor. What do you have? A light cruiser (a heavy cruiser is armored, a light cruiser isn't; CLs have broadside grasers, DDs don't). Maybe take a missile tube and a graser out of each broadside to make it a little smaller. Admittedly, it's f*cking huge by CL standards, but it's still functionally a CL. Let's call it the Atticus.

What does the Atticus give you? Well it's much faster for a start - lower mass means a higher accel given the same compensator. But maybe you don't need all that extra accel, so you can put some of that removed mass back in as other things. Like extra life support so you can carry a larger marine complement (say TWO companies vs the Sag-C's one).

So now what do you have? What you have is an MDM equivalent of the classic CL - a reasonable endurance, fast but unarmored ship with an excellent marine complement (basically a short battalion) that is perfect for anti-piracy and commerce raiding work. And, when your enemies don't have MDMs and thus don't have the range to hit you, it's actually a more flexible (but less powerful) "space superiority platform" than a Sag-C.

IMHO, the "Atticus" is a better light ship than the Roland DD. The Roland is awesome, but it runs dry fast and it has NO marine complement. That makes it a terribly inflexible platform that really isn't suited to anti-piracy work and also runs into trouble if its task actually requires boots on the ground (cough-Saltash-cough). An Atticus fixes these problems.

So, why am I wrong?

I really doubt that the armor that a Saganami-C class heavy cruiser weighs as much as you are assuming. Basically, your Atticus class is heavy cruiser design that replaces missile tubes (and storage) with marine quarters (it will still be armed with DDMs).

Atticus_of_Amber wrote:I may be misremembering, but I thought compensator efficiency was proportional to mass and that starship armor weighed a LOT. Certainly late 19th/early 20th century wet navy armor weighed a tonne - wet navy CAs were a lot slower than CLs but not that much bigger in pure dimensions, iirc.

I think I remember a comment in SVW that Honor's Nike's armor took up a fair bit of its "mass budget". I know Nike was a BC and not a CA, but still...

More Than Honor, The Universe of Honor Harrington, (1) Background (General) wrote:Then, in 1384 pd, a physicist by the name of Shigematsu Radhakrishnan added another major breakthrough in the form of the inertial compensator. The compensator turned the grav wave (natural or artificial) associated with a vessel into a sort of "inertial sump," dumping the inertial forces of acceleration into the grav wave and thus exempting the vessel's crew from the g forces associated with acceleration. Within the limits of its efficiency, it completely eliminated g force, placing an accelerating vessel in a permanent state of internal zero-gee, but its capacity to damp inertia was directly proportional to the power of the grav wave around it and inversely proportional to both the volume of the field and the mass of the vessel about which it was generated. The first factor meant that it was far more effective for starships than for sublight ships, as the former drew upon the greater energy of the naturally occurring grav waves of hyper-space, and the second meant it was more effective for smaller ships than for larger ones. The natural grav waves of hyper-space, with their incomparably greater power, offered a much "deeper" sump than the artificial stress bands of the impeller drive, which meant that a Warshawski Sail ship could deflect vastly more g force from its passengers than one under impeller drive. In general terms, the compensator permitted humans to endure acceleration rates approaching 550 g under impeller drive and 4-5,000 g under sail, which allows hyperships to make up "bleed-off" velocity very quickly after translation. These numbers are for military compensators, which tend to be more massive, more energy and maintenance intensive, and much more expensive than those used in most merchant construction. Military compensators allow higher acceleration—and warships cannot afford to be less maneuverable than their foes—but only at the cost of penalties merchant ships as a whole cannot afford.
In practical terms, the maximum acceleration a ship can pull is defined in Figure 2.
These accelerations are with inertial compensator safety margins cut to zero. Normally, warships operate with a 20% safety margin, while MS safety margins run as high as 35%. Note also that the cargo carried by a starship is less important than the table above might suggest. The numbers in Figure 2 use mass as the determining factor, but the size of the field is of very nearly equal importance. A 7.5 million-ton freighter with empty cargo holds would require the same size field as one with full holds, and so would have the same effective acceleration capability.

Atticus_of_Amber wrote:I may be misremembering, but I thought compensator efficiency was proportional to mass and that starship armor weighed a LOT. Certainly late 19th/early 20th century wet navy armor weighed a tonne - wet navy CAs were a lot slower than CLs but not that much bigger in pure dimensions, iirc.

Vince wrote:

More Than Honor, The Universe of Honor Harrington, (1) Background (General) wrote:Then, in 1384 pd, a physicist by the name of Shigematsu Radhakrishnan added another major breakthrough in the form of the inertial compensator. The compensator turned the grav wave (natural or artificial) associated with a vessel into a sort of "inertial sump," dumping the inertial forces of acceleration into the grav wave and thus exempting the vessel's crew from the g forces associated with acceleration. Within the limits of its efficiency, it completely eliminated g force, placing an accelerating vessel in a permanent state of internal zero-gee, but its capacity to damp inertia was directly proportional to the power of the grav wave around it and inversely proportional to both the volume of the field and the mass of the vessel about which it was generated. The first factor meant that it was far more effective for starships than for sublight ships, as the former drew upon the greater energy of the naturally occurring grav waves of hyper-space, and the second meant it was more effective for smaller ships than for larger ones. The natural grav waves of hyper-space, with their incomparably greater power, offered a much "deeper" sump than the artificial stress bands of the impeller drive, which meant that a Warshawski Sail ship could deflect vastly more g force from its passengers than one under impeller drive. In general terms, the compensator permitted humans to endure acceleration rates approaching 550 g under impeller drive and 4-5,000 g under sail, which allows hyperships to make up "bleed-off" velocity very quickly after translation. These numbers are for military compensators, which tend to be more massive, more energy and maintenance intensive, and much more expensive than those used in most merchant construction. Military compensators allow higher acceleration—and warships cannot afford to be less maneuverable than their foes—but only at the cost of penalties merchant ships as a whole cannot afford.
In practical terms, the maximum acceleration a ship can pull is defined in Figure 2.
These accelerations are with inertial compensator safety margins cut to zero. Normally, warships operate with a 20% safety margin, while MS safety margins run as high as 35%. Note also that the cargo carried by a starship is less important than the table above might suggest. The numbers in Figure 2 use mass as the determining factor, but the size of the field is of very nearly equal importance. A 7.5 million-ton freighter with empty cargo holds would require the same size field as one with full holds, and so would have the same effective acceleration capability.

Boldface, underlined and color text is my emphasis.

Weird Harold wrote:
DDMs (Mk-16Gs) are still a lot better than the ERMs/LERMs of the Avalon class.

pappilon wrote:
IMHO, The CL is going the way of the frigate.Between the Roland class DDs and the Saganami "C" CAs here is no mission parameter for the CL, it is squeezed out.

Dauntless wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
DDMs (Mk-16Gs) are still a lot better than the ERMs/LERMs of the Avalon class.

pappilon wrote:
IMHO, The CL is going the way of the frigate.Between the Roland class DDs and the Saganami "C" CAs here is no mission parameter for the CL, it is squeezed out.

I'm not so sure that the CL as a platform is gone.

the main difference as i recall between a DD and a CL has always been rather small. the CL was a basically a slightly bigger DD, with a slightly bigger weapons load (8 tube broadside to a DD's six and graser in place of laser mounts) and more importantly combat endurance. basically the extra mass tended to used for deeper magazines and a biger marine detachment.

personally I believe a roland stretched out to 250/300K with the same sort of armament layout of maybe 8/10 tubes as chase weapons, 5 grasers in the broadside and more life support for the marines would work just fine for a DDM CL. call it the Fearless class of CL

it could be argued that in peacetime the Roland doesn't do enough as it will struggle with the anti piracy that was (and in all likelihood will be) that was a bit part of a DDs duties pre war due to its lack of marines and small magazines.