Honorverse ramblings and musings

lyonheart wrote:Hi cthia,

Again, are you trolling?

Since you overlooked that being inside the hyper limit means you can't hyper out to micro-jump?

BTW, Barricade is inherently wasteful of MDM's, every tactic has a cost, but attacking the enemy formation isn't its purpose; and trying to match them with the primary attack volley would only work in very few cases where the enemy was far more inept than Tamaguchi.

L

cthia wrote:

cthia wrote:quote="Brigade XO"Not sure why the Barrricade missiles would not have been usefull against the SLN ships unless they were either ultimatly destroyed by wedge fratricide of their missile targets or ended up too far from the SLN ships and never entered their engagement range of those ships.

Given that The SLN was chasing- presuming they were going on the same vector and Tremain's force wasn't attempting to curve away to a closer point of the hyper limit- they should have ended up flying right through the remains of any of those RMN vollies. While the power supply for the missiles wedges might have been drained, that doesn't have to mean that the warheads would be dead. Even one laser head going off infront of the SLN ships would have had some effect if nothing more than forcing them to concentrate some sensor capability to other ballistic weapons.quote

BARRICADE I suppose we as readers should give a moment of silence and appreciation for Tremaine's first battle tactic, born of his first battle plan.

There's plenty of the Old Lady in this plan and a little of Foraker too. We must study our enemy musn't we?

I'm not sure why they wouldn't have been useful either. Unless they were all destroyed, which I didn't get the feeling that that was the case. Subsequent launches also attacked to get more of the SLN missiles that were missed. But I kept waiting for the part that the surviving missiles would carry on.

As a matter of fact, since the Barricade missiles had lower acceleration and the follow up launches would overtake them easily, perhaps they could have been made to arrive very closely together -- after the Barricade missiles had passed through the Solarian launches with plenty of time left on their drives.

It was also noted that Tamaguchi was towing lots of pods. I just knew they were going to be targeted by stealthy probes and destroyed. But perhaps it was concluded that more of the missiles could be destroyed while in their ballistic phase than by stealthy armed probes.

I also thought Tamaguchi would give tit-for-tat as far as the tactic of hypering out and microjumping out of the other side of the system to bring the Charles Ward to bear. They might have been able to destroy the fleet auxiliary. She would have made a nice prize, if so.

One of these days I am going to read up on trolling if only to satisfy your insistence that I'm a troll. If there are facts that I missed, I missed them because I'm human and not a techno geek, not because I'm a troll. Benefit of the doubt from you, once or twice? Don't always assume the worse.

Can't hyper out? Both parties were threatening to do so. Tamaguchi was running for the limit and Ginger's contingency was threatening to microjump to bring Tamaguchi to bear.

Not saying you're incorrect inasmuch as I'm at a lost -- my less than stellar understanding of the tech, you see. Hence, the reason for positing the question.

At any rate, why waste the surviving missiles of Barricade when they could still be used? They were perfectly capable of receiving new orders, despite what their original mission was.

cthia wrote:One of these days I am going to read up on trolling if only to satisfy your insistence that I'm a troll. If there are facts that I missed, I missed them because I'm human and not a techno geek, not because I'm a troll. Benefit of the doubt from you, once or twice? Don't always assume the worse.

Can't hyper out? Both parties were threatening to do so. Tamaguchi was running for the limit and Ginger's contingency was threatening to microjump to bring Tamaguchi to bear.

Not saying you're incorrect inasmuch as I'm at a lost -- my less than stellar understanding of the tech, you see. Hence, the reason for positing the question.

At any rate, why waste the surviving missiles of Barricade when they could still be used? They were perfectly capable of receiving new orders, despite what their original mission was.

I suspect that a (the?) reason while the Barricade missiles still had plenty of time on their drives, they were too far away to be retargeted (remember, no RMN ships in the battle had Keyhole I, let alone Keyhole II--which is the only platform that mounts FTL fire control transmitters for ships).

Vince wrote:I suspect that a (the?) reason while the Barricade missiles still had plenty of time on their drives, they were too far away to be retargeted (remember, no RMN ships in the battle had Keyhole I, let alone Keyhole II--which is the only platform that mounts FTL fire control transmitters for ships).

There was a whole huge pile of plot involved in that whole ridiculous scene.

cthia wrote:

BARRICADE I suppose we as readers should give a moment of silence and appreciation for Tremaine's first battle tactic, born of his first battle plan.

Apologies if it's already been hashed out, but I'm having trouble visualizing how one outbound barricade missile could have gotten more than one inbound missile per salvo. Even if the inbound launch was stacked as tightly together as possible before the ballistic phase, the Mk23's wedge should not be large enough to get multiple per.

The two 72 missile Barricade launches should have netted at most 144 from each of the four incoming salvos. The textev says that the first inbound launch was down to 91 birds out of 500, or almost 3 inbound kills per outbound.

The only way I can think of that even might get that sort of effectiveness is to slash through at an angle, but even then it seems overly generous.

ericth wrote:Apologies if it's already been hashed out, but I'm having trouble visualizing how one outbound barricade missile could have gotten more than one inbound missile per salvo. Even if the inbound launch was stacked as tightly together as possible before the ballistic phase, the Mk23's wedge should not be large enough to get multiple per.

The two 72 missile Barricade launches should have netted at most 144 from each of the four incoming salvos. The textev says that the first inbound launch was down to 91 birds out of 500, or almost 3 inbound kills per outbound.

The only way I can think of that even might get that sort of effectiveness is to slash through at an angle, but even then it seems overly generous.

Nobody has provided a geometry that makes any sense when I brought this up way back when.

It’s plot all the way down. Including the steathly LAC towing a SD(P) missile core at 700g. None of this makes any sense. It’s like David said, wow, I need to turn the MS in in an hour, and I only have ‘Insert battle scene here’...

ericth wrote:Apologies if it's already been hashed out, but I'm having trouble visualizing how one outbound barricade missile could have gotten more than one inbound missile per salvo. Even if the inbound launch was stacked as tightly together as possible before the ballistic phase, the Mk23's wedge should not be large enough to get multiple per.

Yeah, I can’t figure it out either. When the outbound Cataphracts’ 1st stage burned out the6 had to be far enough apart to avoid wedge fratricide. There’s no reason I can think of that they’d use reaction thrusters to bottleneck together for the coast phase since they’d just have to separate again before bringing up their wedges. Nor can I think they be flying nose to tail because then the trailing missile would be blinded by the leading missile plus they’d cut off the leading missile’s telemetry. I suppose you could vertically stack missiles less than 10 km apart, in which case I guess a wedge tilted sideways (or pitched up) could hit multiple inbound; but that’s a stupid approach geometry because it maximizes the chance of a CM killing multiple missiles.

I don’t think there was time for the Mk23s to loop around so they streaked across the face of the coasting salvo at 46000 gees. You’d need to basically match their inbound velocity, rather than blowing though, so you have to boost out, make turnover, kill your outbound vector, and boost back towards your fleet. I just don’t see there being time. (Though if you did it’d answer cthia’s question about why they weren’t used to attack — they would end up heading away from the enemy BCs and without enough drive time remaining to build up a useful attack vector)

You can stack them nose to tail, with a little off-set. That let's you keep telemetry, you can see down the kilts, while also hiding some of the missile wedges behind your own, and maximizing the rate of fire. The other way you could get a better rate of fire is by having the initial launch spread the missiles so they are vertically/horizontally stacked. If you do neither wedge fratricide limits your rate of fire.


Now grouping their missiles that close is stupid if you're including a ballistic phase. Not just because of Barricade, but because you could just fire proximity nukes and fry a bunch of missiles for the cost of one. IIRC, the "triple ripple" did that, except its targets could still maneuver and had the wedge up to power radiation/particle shields.

No, that won’t work. The wedge of the missile forward blocks the second missile from the front and the wedge of the rear missile blocks telemetry for all the other missiles.

The missiles are going to automatically deploy into a formation where they can see the target, see their controlling ship and be at least a wedge diameter apart. It makes no sense to do anything else unless explicitly commanded.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ericth wrote:Apologies if it's already been hashed out, but I'm having trouble visualizing how one outbound barricade missile could have gotten more than one inbound missile per salvo. Even if the inbound launch was stacked as tightly together as possible before the ballistic phase, the Mk23's wedge should not be large enough to get multiple per.

Yeah, I can’t figure it out either. When the outbound Cataphracts’ 1st stage burned out the6 had to be far enough apart to avoid wedge fratricide. There’s no reason I can think of that they’d use reaction thrusters to bottleneck together for the coast phase since they’d just have to separate again before bringing up their wedges. Nor can I think they be flying nose to tail because then the trailing missile would be blinded by the leading missile plus they’d cut off the leading missile’s telemetry. I suppose you could vertically stack missiles less than 10 km apart, in which case I guess a wedge tilted sideways (or pitched up) could hit multiple inbound; but that’s a stupid approach geometry because it maximizes the chance of a CM killing multiple missiles.

I don’t think there was time for the Mk23s to loop around so they streaked across the face of the coasting salvo at 46000 gees. You’d need to basically match their inbound velocity, rather than blowing though, so you have to boost out, make turnover, kill your outbound vector, and boost back towards your fleet. I just don’t see there being time. (Though if you did it’d answer cthia’s question about why they weren’t used to attack — they would end up heading away from the enemy BCs and without enough drive time remaining to build up a useful attack vector)

I thought they were skewing/corkscrewing along inside the SLN missiles, in conjunction with or rather assisted by the tight formation of SLN missiles. I could be wrong about the corkscrew. And remember, two subsequent launches followed to get the missiles that were missed. Surely on a slightly different path than the previous.

Yes, Jonathan, I considered that Barricade's missiles could have been out of position, but then the two formations would have been headed directly for each other. The SLN needed to get as close as possible to increase their solutions. And they would have craved an energy duel, further increasing the probability that they were headed directly for the Manty formation. Which would have put Barricade's missiles still in play.

They could have been too far to receive orders, per Vince's explanation. But I wouldn't think that the case either, since they were launched at low accelerations and after the SLN had launched all salvos. So they would have been still fairly close to RMN ships to receive orders.

Another reason to use Barricade's missiles? Perhaps they could be timed to simultaneously arrive on target with the main launch, which could simulate a staggered launch. Staggered launches are used ruthlessly. Staggered launches aren't just arbitrarily staggered. They are staggered according to certain precise intervals. E.g., in my best guess, the swivel radius and reacquire limitations of pulse cannons -- or whatever defines the limitation of the mechanics of point defense. Very slow missiles coming in right along with the very fast missiles can throw man and machine temporarily in a quandary, a fatal lull of vulnerability.

Especially when you know how software generally works. As a programmer, as a Harkness, I would bring some innovative thinking to point defense and associated tactics, because I am familiar with some of the more esoteric theories of point defense. And software's impact on the tactic and tech.

There was more than one utility left in the surviving drives of Barricade's missiles. In a nutshell, it typifies why you rotate officers under different hats. The hats and the officers benefit.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Yeah, I can’t figure it out either. When the outbound Cataphracts’ 1st stage burned out the6 had to be far enough apart to avoid wedge fratricide. There’s no reason I can think of that they’d use reaction thrusters to bottleneck together for the coast phase since they’d just have to separate again before bringing up their wedges. Nor can I think they be flying nose to tail because then the trailing missile would be blinded by the leading missile plus they’d cut off the leading missile’s telemetry. I suppose you could vertically stack missiles less than 10 km apart, in which case I guess a wedge tilted sideways (or pitched up) could hit multiple inbound; but that’s a stupid approach geometry because it maximizes the chance of a CM killing multiple missiles.

I don’t think there was time for the Mk23s to loop around so they streaked across the face of the coasting salvo at 46000 gees. You’d need to basically match their inbound velocity, rather than blowing though, so you have to boost out, make turnover, kill your outbound vector, and boost back towards your fleet. I just don’t see there being time. (Though if you did it’d answer cthia’s question about why they weren’t used to attack — they would end up heading away from the enemy BCs and without enough drive time remaining to build up a useful attack vector)

I thought they were skewing/corkscrewing along inside the SLN missiles, in conjunction with or rather assisted by the tight formation of SLN missiles. I could be wrong about the corkscrew. And remember, two subsequent launches followed to get the missiles that were missed. Surely on a slightly different path than the previous.

Yes, Jonathan, I considered that Barricade's missiles could have been out of position, but then the two formations would have been headed directly for each other. The SLN needed to get as close as possible to increase their solutions. And they would have craved an energy duel, further increasing the probability that they were headed directly for the Manty formation. Which would have put Barricade's missiles still in play.

They could have been too far to receive orders, per Vince's explanation. But I wouldn't think that the case either, since they were launched at low accelerations and after the SLN had launched all salvos. So they would have been still fairly close to RMN ships to receive orders.

Another reason to use Barricade's missiles? Perhaps they could be timed to simultaneously arrive on target with the main launch, which could simulate a staggered launch. Staggered launches are used ruthlessly. Staggered launches aren't just arbitrarily staggered. They are staggered according to certain precise intervals. E.g., in my best guess, the swivel radius and reacquire limitations of pulse cannons -- or whatever defines the limitation of the mechanics of point defense. Very slow missiles coming in right along with the very fast missiles can throw man and machine temporarily in a quandary, a fatal lull of vulnerability.

Especially when you know how software generally works. As a programmer, as a Harkness, I would bring some innovative thinking to point defense and associated tactics, because I am familiar with some of the more esoteric theories of point defense. And software's impact on the tactic and tech.

There was more than one utility left in the surviving drives of Barricade's missiles. In a nutshell, it typifies why you rotate officers under different hats. The hats and the officers benefit.

Another limitation is maneuvering under a wedge still requires thrusters - and Missiles aren't exactly lousy with excess hydrogen bunkers for making plasma. Corkscrewing would require a massive side delta v, while passing through the cloud of missiles in less than a second. Any maneuvering will mostly likely end up with the missiles spread out with odd vectors, and little remaining RCS fuel.

IF barricade is to be used repeatedly, it would make sense for drive 2 of MDMs to have a different drive setting - like the ability to make a 40 or 50 km wedge at the cost of drive time (and accel), then you would be able to snipe a few missile with each Barricade missile.