ywing14 wrote:kzt wrote:I think it’s 50 per broadside.
In At All Costs its listed as a total of 50 missile tubes.
Somewhere I remember reading this was a typo, but apparently if it was David ran with it like the did the LAC years for months typo.
From HOS:
Carrying 50 broadside launchers capable of off-bore firing the Mk16 DDM, the Nike can launch a salvo of 50 missiles into any aspect, and her magazines allow for over 40 minutes of maximum rate fire. The class’ improved compensators allow an acceleration rate thirty percent greater than that of the Reliant-class, despite being over twice the mass of the older unit. While suffering from the greatest “tonnage creep” of any class in RMN history, the Nike well illustrates the RMN’s policy of defining ships by their role and not by their tonnage. This has not prevented the size and classification from creating intense debate. In raw figures, these ships are five times the mass of a Saganami-C, with only a 25% increase in missile tubes. Accusations of poor design by BuShips and even outright incompetence are exacerbated by the fact that the Nike carries the same Mk16 DDM as the Saganami-C.
These critics overlook important difference in the capabilities of the two platforms and their designed missions. The Nike is designed to lead and survive independent long-duration deep-raiding missions in an era dominated by multi-drive missiles. The simple numbers of beam mounts, missile launchers and active defense systems belie qualitative per-mount differences. While a Nike and a Saganami-C may carry the same missile, each of a Nike’s launchers has four times the magazine capacity of her smaller heavy cruiser counterpart. A Nike’s grasers and point defense laser clusters are all superdreadnought grade. Their emitter diameter, plasma beam intensity, gravitic photon conditioning hardware, and on-mount energy storage capacity all rival the most modern capital ships. Finally, much of the Nike’s impressive mass is devoted to passive defense. Screening and sidewall generators have near-capital-ship levels of redundancy. The external armor system, internal mount compartmentalization, outer hull framing, and core hull construction are all designed to at least pre-war superdreadnought standards. Nikes, finally, carry full flagship facilities and incorporate much greater Marine carrying and support capacity. The Saganami-Cs, while impressive space control platforms, have little or none of this capability.
The only reason, in fact, that a Nike might be less survivable than the pre-war superdreadnought is the physical distance between the armor and the core hull. There simply is not enough depth to guarantee the same level of survivability to vital core systems as in a larger capital vessel. Early after-action reports indicate, however, that Nike’s survivability against her intended targets (heavy cruisers and other battlecruisers) has been extraordinary.
Above all other design elements, the addition of the Mark 20 Keyhole platform to the Nike-class allows it a greater level of tactical flexibility than any other warship currently in service. This costs a tremendous amount of mass and creates interesting problems (which some commentators describe as weaknesses) in the armor system. But those costs buy the ability to tether the platforms outside the wedge, which, coupled with the off-bore missile launchers, makes Nike the one of the first warships that can fight an entire engagement with her wedge to the enemy. The telemetry repeaters allow full control of both missiles and countermissiles, and the platforms’ onboard point defenses thicken defensive fire. In addition, the Keyhole platform can act as a “handoff” relay, allowing a Nike to coordinate offensive and defensive missile control for another ship while both keep their wedges to the threat. This flexibility has resulted in vastly increased computational complexity in offensive and defensive engagement programming and helps to explain much of the class’ survivability.
