The New GA Capital Ships

kzt wrote:

munroburton wrote:
It's a valid point. To account for the tonnage difference: The BC(P) has 1 missile per 486 tons. The BC(L) has 1 per 419 tons, an improvement of roughly 15%.

The real question is whether a tube SD can be designed which has enough launcher capacity to match pod deployment rates - can it attain that ~15% magazine increase without severely compromising other combat capabilities?

I still feel it’s totally crazy to compromise on anything else to produce deeper magazines. With BCs and above, they don’t run out of ammo. They blow up well before that in an extended fight. Survivability is far more of an issue than magazine size. As is fire control capability. The BC(p) had some absurdly low capability.

Yeah, I think past a certain point, magazine size is more of a strategic asset rather than a tactical one. Rolands are empty after one serious battle and become vulnerable until they rearm, whereas a Nike is intended to raid one system, then move onto another and another without dragging a missile collier around.

One issue I see is, tube-launching warships have to spend broadside surface area on launchers. This detracts from surface area available for everything else - fire control, point defense, countermissiles, sidewall generators, armour, etc.. Probably why the Nike has so "few" more missile launchers compared to the Sag-C.

So in the final analysis, a SD(P) is probably the more effective unit, especially if they keep beefing up defensive capabilities.

ldwechsler wrote:

Kael Posavatz wrote:There are also the issues of salvo density and wedge interaction.

The Nike's are a bit less than triple the mass of a flight II reliant, but add only three missiles in a broadside. Missiles aside, its firepower advantage comes from being able to fire off-bore and stack salvos. That worked for BCs against a navy with similar tech.

I don't think it'd scale the same way for an SD. The Agamemnon class is almost double the mass of a flight II Reliant, and the Nike closer to three, but an Invictus is barely 430k-tons heavier than the Gryphon. Even dialing back the number of energy mounts, that makes it a question of how many launchers can you pack in while still 1) not packing them so close the missiles kill each other with their wedges, and 2) not blinding the grav-pulse link with the Keyhole II.

Toss in the need for some of those launchers to be apollo-command tubes and useless for standard offensive missiles (but I suppose could be used for CM canisters). And such an arrangement would lose the ability to a) go on rolling pods for other ships even if it loses keyholeII/fire control, and b) the ability to stack pods into huge (per ship) salvos.

There are a lot of other factors not mentioned yet. Nike's are far tougher than the podlayers. Also, they are far more versatile. The podtossers are good in major battles. But remember that the Hexapumas were the ones who smashed up Crandall's fleet.

How big, how many missiles are going to be needed right away? The Sollies have a lot of ships but they can't really beat the top GA ships. The GA looks like the nations are getting closer, friendlier.

The Nikes might be the best ships to send around for a while. Work with them until there are some really useful upgrades that call for bigger models.

The Sag-C was designed to fight an opponent with similar tech (say, oh, the RHN). What happened to Crandall is proof that quantity does not make up for quality if the disparity in quality is wide enough. Second, the Sag-Cs were using the pod-based missiles that had been intended for the magazines of the delayed SD(P)s.

And as I recall the Nikes have Keyhole I (and Sag-Cs don't), which might also account for how the late-model CAs have significantly more missile tubes compared to pre-war classes (and compared to the differences tube-numbers among BC classes)

How are you doing?
Your earlier post referencing your doctor interrupting is worrisome.

I'm not alluding to a big tonnage increase but to basic design.

In the earliest Honorverse books Weber explains that the width of impeller wedges imposed a requirement that missile tubes be spaced far enough apart to avoid catastrophic impeller interference. If the missiles delay activation of their impeller drives, then the missile tubes can be much closer together.

Finally, firing rate had historically been governed not just by time to resch the target to enable guidance to target but by the time requirement to charge up the capacitors on the missiles. With fusion powered missiles similar to the Mk-16, the power up should require less energy and thus be faster. (I favor the idea of a low yield nuke detobated inside the reaction chamber to jump start thr fusion reactor, but that is just my philosophy)

Finally, Nike, Saggy C and Rolland can bring considerable firepower into battle via strap on missile pods. The new SD could have physical attachments for pods as well as "extension cords" to power them. Yes, the pods are vulnerable. However; you loose the pods before you loose the ship and you dont loose the ability to launch all your pods because of a hit to your pod bay doors.

I think that a new tube based SD could perform as well compared to a Podnaught as a Nike does against

kzt wrote:

munroburton wrote:
It's a valid point. To account for the tonnage difference: The BC(P) has 1 missile per 486 tons. The BC(L) has 1 per 419 tons, an improvement of roughly 15%.

The real question is whether a tube SD can be designed which has enough launcher capacity to match pod deployment rates - can it attain that ~15% magazine increase without severely compromising other combat capabilities?

I still feel it’s totally crazy to compromise on anything else to produce deeper magazines. With BCs and above, they don’t run out of ammo. They blow up well before that in an extended fight. Survivability is far more of an issue than magazine size. As is fire control capability. The BC(p) had some absurdly low capability.

I’m fine, my sinuses maybe not so much.

David has the reactors or missiles and drones ignited by piping plasma from the ships main reactor into the missile or drone reactor. Which means there is a network of conduits penetrating the core armor that are full of stellar core plasma, 15 Million degree, 150 ton/m^3 plasma (at some insane pressure), running to every missile tube.

What could possibly go wrong?

kzt wrote:I’m fine, my sinuses maybe not so much.

David has the reactors or missiles and drones ignited by piping plasma from the ships main reactor into the missile or drone reactor. Which means there is a network of conduits penetrating the core armor that are full of stellar core plasma, 15 Million degree, 150 ton/m^3 plasma (at some insane pressure), running to every missile tube.

What could possibly go wrong?

Did Weber really use that 150 ton/m^3 number or did you calculate that yourself? It is within the ball park.

I was toying with writing Sci Fi some decades ago with space combat. My starships were designed to abidebby the laws of known physics as much as possible. The notional, million ton warship powered by a fusion rocket with an exhaust velocity of about 3eex7 m/s, accellerating at One Gee would require a reactor power of about 3eex17 watts.

In contrast, total insolation for the Earth is 1,400 Watt/m^3 x pi x (6.4eex6m)^2 ~ 5eex16 Watts.

Obviously,I did not imagine my warships sneaking up on each other under stealth.

There is no stealth in space.

Weapons traveling at even near realitivistic velocities do not need to have warheads. 100 tons at 2eex8 m/s = 2eex21 Joules = 500,000 megatons! Fortunately; fusion rocket powered warships and missiles have a Delta Vee of about 1/10 cee.

My protagonist was a heavy worlder who grew up in a bronze age culture. He was recruited by the space faring human descended who were adapted to life in microgravity environments. His mother, who had become Empress of the world thanks to his conquests found it politically expdiant to exile him because her conquered subjects viewed him as a war criminal. The space dwellers were obliged to hire mercenaries from less advanced, planet bound cultures to pilot their warships because they can not survive high gee. My hero was about 2.5 meters tall, 250 kg gentically engineered giant who can lift and carry his own weight in a 2 gee gravity. He is more promiscuous than Admiral Henke. (We will not discuss certain physical attributes that enable his extreme promiscuity on this family forum)

Hiring a bronze aged barbarian who is considered a aar criminal by his own people to pilot a million ton warship that is capable of sterilizing a world?
What could possibly go wrong?

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Did Weber really use that 150 ton/m^3 number or did you calculate that yourself? It is within the ball park.

That was me. Not sure what David uses in his tech notes. I'm kind of suspecting that is kind of hand waved. Personally I think it would make more sense to use superconducting cables to dump an exawatt into the reactor core to fire it up, but it's not my books.

kzt wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Did Weber really use that 150 ton/m^3 number or did you calculate that yourself? It is within the ball park.

That was me. Not sure what David uses in his tech notes. I'm kind of suspecting that is kind of hand waved. Personally I think it would make more sense to use superconducting cables to dump an exawatt into the reactor core to fire it up, but it's not my books.

Amen

Traditional SDs have power supplies to charge the capicitors on non fusion missiles.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:
Traditional SDs have power supplies to charge the capicitors on non fusion missiles.

I’m not actually sure that is true. They are plasma capacitors...

I suppose it might be possible to provide dedicated CM canister launchers (and the nessisary magazine/feed systems to a new class of ships and thicken the CM envelope but to make that effective you probably would also need to have them more than a cluster munition launch (add impeller to move them for some period of time) AND proved the control channels (over and above those for your anti-ship missiles) such that you would get one of more skirmisher screens of CM's out beyond where your normal CM launchers are going to get their shots. That includes making the canisters maneuverable so they could normaly get between your ship(s) and the incomming slavo of enemy missiles.
Not quite that easy.