Sprint drive

At the Battle of Torch, as Mesan "prates" attack the defenders, the "pirates" used Technodyne missles with a sprint-drive, an addiditional counter missle drive on their missles. This sprint drive add some extra speed to the missles at the end of the flight to cross the enemy defense line faster.

I think we can expect, that Manticore noticed that kind of innovation after the battle. My question is, will they use that idea for future missle models?

First I have to remember, that a sprint drive used like above would be a problem for the Manties. A sprint drive decrease the time of your missles under enemy fire, yes, but what is with all the manticorian electronic warfare toys? If you also use sprint drives at your electronic helpers they would be less useful, if you only give your missles with warhead a sprint drive, the enemy would only fight these missles.

So, a sprint drive at the end of the flight would be a problem for manticorian warfare, but what is with the beginning of the flight? What is, if you use the sprint drive as a booster at the start of the missle? The missle would get more speed at the beginning, would reach faster top speed and would fly longer at top speed. The result would be a higher range. It is a calculation: if the addiditional range is higher than the loss of the higher weight of the sprint drive it would pay off.

Maybe this was discussed already and I haven´t noticed that, but this is my thinking about the sprint drive.

Maldorian wrote:At the Battle of Torch, as Mesan "prates" attack the defenders, the "pirates" used Technodyne missles with a sprint-drive, an addiditional counter missle drive on their missles. This sprint drive add some extra speed to the missles at the end of the flight to cross the enemy defense line faster.

The Two-Stage design of the Cataphracts has some serious drawbacks.

1: Cataphracts are substantially larger than equivalent Manticoran (or Havenite) missiles. They are essentially a standard SLN Missile with a standard SLN CM drive mounted in place of the normal warhead.

2: Cataphracts have smaller warheads because the "sprint-stage" can't handle the normal warhead for a given class of missile. Capital ships can only fire cruiser-weight warheads from internal tubes. The only way to fire Capital-weight warheads is with pod-launched Cataphract-C missiles.

3: SLN Warheads are weaker than Manticoran Warheads of the same nominal class. At least those with the same improvements as the "Mk-16 Mod G," which is noted in textev as being as powerful as (SLN) capital-ship missiles. (the thought was during the Battle of Monica against former SLN BCs)

4: IIRC, Cataphract A and B variants are still out-ranged by Manticoran LERM and ERM Destroyer-weight and Crusier-weight missiles, ignoring any ballistic component from the Cataphract.

In short, the Cataphracts only real advantage is the "sprint-drive" second stage. That sprint-drive imposes some serious trade-offs and can be countered with a simple software upgrade in CK and PDLC targeting.

Technodyne went with the main-sprint driver combination because they are unable to duplicate the Manitcoran setup which uses two main drives.

The RMN missile drives are shielded from each other, but the Technodyne missiles are physically separated. To separate them like that with two main drives would be even larger than what they are doing now.

Also, the fact that the Technodyne missiles are faster on final approach can be handled by software and is not a major factor.

Maldorian wrote:At the Battle of Torch, as Mesan "prates" attack the defenders, the "pirates" used Technodyne missles with a sprint-drive, an addiditional counter missle drive on their missles. This sprint drive add some extra speed to the missles at the end of the flight to cross the enemy defense line faster.

I think we can expect, that Manticore noticed that kind of innovation after the battle. My question is, will they use that idea for future missle models?

RFC said a while ago that the new 4-drive Apollo system defense missiles, designed to pair with Mycroft, already have a CM drive for their 4th drive.

That gives them quicker lateral displacement after a long ballistic flight, but at some point it’s going to force him to declare a missile top speed. To date the missile acceleration, velocity, and range numbers show that somehow missiles are immune to acceleration loss from relativistivity. But a 4-drive missile’s straight line max velocity (if you ignore relativity) would be faster than light —opps—

But I don’t think ECM time is a consideration. A normal engagement ranges a DDM would actually cross the point defense envelope in less time that a Cataphract with a sprint drive 2nd stage. The sprint drive has higher acceleration but only last 41% as long so total velocity added is 11% lower (98,000 gees for 75 seconds = 0.245c vs 46,000 gees for 180 seconds = 0.276c).

Weird Harold wrote:2: Cataphracts have smaller warheads because the "sprint-stage" can't handle the normal warhead for a given class of missile. Capital ships can only fire cruiser-weight warheads from internal tubes. The only way to fire Capital-weight warheads is with pod-launched Cataphract-C missiles.

Huh? Capital ships can only fire cruiser-weight warheads because they can only fire Cat-B missiles, but I don't recall an additional downgrade of the warhead. IIRC the reason given why the C-Version is restricted to pods was them being too long for the handling systems to handle.

Weird Harold wrote:4: IIRC, Cataphract A and B variants are still out-ranged by Manticoran LERM and ERM Destroyer-weight and Crusier-weight missiles, ignoring any ballistic component from the Cataphract.

Mk16 sure. Single drive missiles doubtful, do we have any hard numbers? I dimly remember a mention that the Manticoran alliance essentially abandoned extended range single drive missiles when practical MDMs came around while the Technodyne missiles at Monica were described at being longer-ranged than older models.

Maybe I wrote my post not clear enough or you are misunderstanding me:

"I am NOT talking about the Cataphracts! I am talking about the Sprint Drive technology and if it is useful for manty missles."

aairfccha wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:2: Cataphracts have smaller warheads because the "sprint-stage" can't handle the normal warhead for a given class of missile. Capital ships can only fire cruiser-weight warheads from internal tubes. The only way to fire Capital-weight warheads is with pod-launched Cataphract-C missiles.

Huh? Capital ships can only fire cruiser-weight warheads because they can only fire Cat-B missiles, but I don't recall an additional downgrade of the warhead. IIRC the reason given why the C-Version is restricted to pods was them being too long for the handling systems to handle.

Weird Harold wrote:4: IIRC, Cataphract A and B variants are still out-ranged by Manticoran LERM and ERM Destroyer-weight and Crusier-weight missiles, ignoring any ballistic component from the Cataphract.

Mk16 sure. Single drive missiles doubtful, do we have any hard numbers? I dimly remember a mention that the Manticoran alliance essentially abandoned extended range single drive missiles when practical MDMs came around while the Technodyne missiles at Monica were described at being longer-ranged than older models.

It's not a downgrade per say - Manticore and to a lesser extent, Haven, have been slowly uping the lethality of their warheads since the beginning o the war.

With the "Mod G" upgrade (this isn't what it is called, but it created the mk 16 mod G warhead) Manticorian Lethality jumped immensely due to increased grav pinching (turning a 10 Mton nuke into a 40 mton nuke, increased Grav focusing (allowing more of the explosion to be focused on target)and miniaturization (allowing six 10M capital lasing Rods to be carried in the place of six 5M rods on the Mk 16 warhead).

While the Solarian League has been improving their warheads in the last 20 years, what they field is no where near as advanced as a Mk-16 mod A was, let alone the mod E upgrade the nuke and focusing upgrades with standard Cruiser 5M rods) or the Mod G. and when you are a cruiser with DD warheads facing a cruiser with SD warheads, you are at more than just a small disadvantage.

The Mk 15 is still fielded by ~84 Sag-Bs and 73 Reliant flight 3/4s. The Mk 36 LERM is fielded by 19 Wolfhounds, >250 Avalons, and 48 Kamerlings.

In certain flight profiles the Manticorian EDM has a slight range advantage over the Cataphract, though the Sprint drive means the Cataphract achieves more delta V at the end than an EDM does.

aairfccha wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:4: IIRC, Cataphract A and B variants are still out-ranged by Manticoran LERM and ERM Destroyer-weight and Crusier-weight missiles, ignoring any ballistic component from the Cataphract.

Mk16 sure. Single drive missiles doubtful, do we have any hard numbers? I dimly remember a mention that the Manticoran alliance essentially abandoned extended range single drive missiles when practical MDMs came around while the Technodyne missiles at Monica were described at being longer-ranged than older models.

No authoritative statements about a Mark 14 or Mark 36's range, nor it's endurance in seconds. But when tangling with the Andermandi in War of Honor it appears they've got about a 15 million km range; and to outrange the IAN missiles which were shown to have a 12 million km range.

However the text in WoH lacks the "from rest" statement we sometimes get when describing missile performance; so all those numbers could be affected by engagement geometry. To get a ERM/LERM out to ~15 million km from rest you'd need ~258 seconds at half power, equiv to 86s at full. That's about 114.6% as much as other ERMs we've seen.

Still if the LERM can reach to 15 million km it's competitive with the Cataphract's 16.5 million km range. Though of course unlike the Cataphract (or any DDM/MDM) a LERM can add a ballistic segment mid-flight. So it's effectively useless beyond it's max powered range.

Maldorian wrote:Maybe I wrote my post not clear enough or you are misunderstanding me:

"I am NOT talking about the Cataphracts! I am talking about the Sprint Drive technology and if it is useful for manty missles."

The sprint drive is the 2nd stage of a Cataphract - so it's a little hard to discuss sprint drive without discussing Cataphracts.

However I already mentioned that the RMN uses a CM derived (sprint-like) 4th drive on their most recent system defense missiles.


Could you add one to a normal Mk23? Certainly it seems you could replace the current 3rd drive with one; but that would actually reduce it's powered range and terminal velocity just to get more delta-v in the final 75 seconds of flight. That's probably not worth it.

Adding a 4th drive would require a larger missile (like the system defense missiles) or you'd have to pull a lot of other things out, and there's not much that could be downsized except # of laserhead and size of warhead. So even if you could cut those enough to squeeze a 4th drive into a missile of the same dimentions the reduction in damage doesn't seem worth the extra range and terminal velocity...

So basically I don't see it as worth while for the RMN to incorporate into their shipboard MDMs - and definitely not into their DDMs.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Maldorian wrote:Maybe I wrote my post not clear enough or you are misunderstanding me:

"I am NOT talking about the Cataphracts! I am talking about the Sprint Drive technology and if it is useful for manty missles."

The sprint drive is the 2nd stage of a Cataphract - so it's a little hard to discuss sprint drive without discussing Cataphracts.

However I already mentioned that the RMN uses a CM derived (sprint-like) 4th drive on their most recent system defense missiles.


Could you add one to a normal Mk23? Certainly it seems you could replace the current 3rd drive with one; but that would actually reduce it's powered range and terminal velocity just to get more delta-v in the final 75 seconds of flight. That's probably not worth it.

Adding a 4th drive would require a larger missile (like the system defense missiles) or you'd have to pull a lot of other things out, and there's not much that could be downsized except # of laserhead and size of warhead. So even if you could cut those enough to squeeze a 4th drive into a missile of the same dimentions the reduction in damage doesn't seem worth the extra range and terminal velocity...

So basically I don't see it as worth while for the RMN to incorporate into their shipboard MDMs - and definitely not into their DDMs.

I'm not quite too sure about that Jonathan.

If the RMN could pull off at least a "sprint mode" made to work in conjunction with staggered missile launches, taking advantage of the weakness of point defense, I think would have an even bigger impact on its already devastating effect.

A sprint mode that kicks in right after the Dazzlers and Dragon's teeth spin up?

"WTF is all of this?"

"Too late!"



I always thought it was a waste, for end of run missiles to complete their runs, with copious amounts of drive time left on tap. Can we utilize all of the remaining drive time in an all out burst?

I'm not sure it can be done. But I'm certainly sure of its proposed effectiveness, if used correctly.