Courvosier II broadside tubes

Hegemon wrote:Exactly, at 40-50 MKm ranges you can activate 1-2 drives at the maximum settings and have your missiles reach their targets with signifficantly higher speeds and minutes before the enemy's missiles reach you (which means you effectively get several free salvoes with no reply).

Though at those ranges, in fact any pre-Apollo effective range) even with normal Mk23s they should already be using at least the 1st drive at it's max setting (High-Low-Low drive profile) - but for some reason we never see them doing so in the books.

Quickest 3-drive profile by range is:
0 - 17 MKm - High-High-High (14-17 requires coast phase)
17 - 41 MKm - High-High-Low (33-41 requires coast phase)
41 - 70 MKm - High-Low-Low (50-70 requires coast phase)
70+ MkM - Low-Low-Low (65+ requires coast phase)

At 50 MKm the HLL profile gets the missile on target 52.4 seconds sooner and with about 2% higher terminal velocity compared to what we see used in the books with all 3 drives at 50% power.

(Somewhere buried on the board is a whole thread I created showing this in detail with graphs)

Jonathan_S wrote:But in 1920 Manticore had about 6 Agamemnon=class BC(P)s and, like the Invictus-class SD(P)s, and the single Nike-class BC(L) they were assigned to the offensive raids that were Manticore's best chance to keep Haven off balance and dispersed.

No, the BC(P) was a significantly older design, there was something of a retcon where they were built before keyhole and refitted. Older I mean like first ship running in the early teens.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Hegemon wrote:Exactly, at 40-50 MKm ranges you can activate 1-2 drives at the maximum settings and have your missiles reach their targets with signifficantly higher speeds and minutes before the enemy's missiles reach you (which means you effectively get several free salvoes with no reply).

Though at those ranges, in fact any pre-Apollo effective range) even with normal Mk23s they should already be using at least the 1st drive at it's max setting (High-Low-Low drive profile) - but for some reason we never see them doing so in the books.

Quickest 3-drive profile by range is:
0 - 17 MKm - High-High-High (14-17 requires coast phase)
17 - 41 MKm - High-High-Low (33-41 requires coast phase)
41 - 70 MKm - High-Low-Low (50-70 requires coast phase)
70+ MkM - Low-Low-Low (65+ requires coast phase)

At 50 MKm the HLL profile gets the missile on target 52.4 seconds sooner and with about 2% higher terminal velocity compared to what we see used in the books with all 3 drives at 50% power.

(Somewhere buried on the board is a whole thread I created showing this in detail with graphs)

It is true that mixing acceleration settings would make for more flexible tactics. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the "splitter plate" technology used in the current generation MDM, you can't set different acceleration rates on the sequenced drive nodes. The "splitter plate" has to be adjusted and paired to the selected acceleration rate (effectively, "set" to damp the molecular distortion of a single power level) across all 3 sets of nodes. (I'm almost sure that I commented on this either in one of the books or in a post online quite some time ago.) This is something that R&D is still working on but has not yet solved.

So the different combinations of "high" and "low" acceleration which are being proposed are not workable at this time. They may become possible, but right now they aren't.

What I hadn't considered, because for so many decades missile acceleration rates were basically hardwired by the various navies at either full acceleration or half acceleration, would be the possibility of dialing in an acceleration rate somewhere between those 2 extremes to max out performance over a given range. I'd have to play around with the numbers a bit, but it seems likely that in certain range brackets that would buy you a bit more time before the enemy's first salvo launched in reply could reach you. I'm inclined to think the window would probably be fairly short, however, and it wouldn't have any impact on the intervals between follow-up salvos, since that interval would be governed by the speed at which pods can be rolled. It might mean a slight advantage in closing speeds, getting the missiles through the defense of envelope a bit faster, but at first glance, I think that would probably be about it.

runsforcelery wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Though at those ranges, in fact any pre-Apollo effective range) even with normal Mk23s they should already be using at least the 1st drive at it's max setting (High-Low-Low drive profile) - but for some reason we never see them doing so in the books.

Quickest 3-drive profile by range is:
0 - 17 MKm - High-High-High (14-17 requires coast phase)
17 - 41 MKm - High-High-Low (33-41 requires coast phase)
41 - 70 MKm - High-Low-Low (50-70 requires coast phase)
70+ MkM - Low-Low-Low (65+ requires coast phase)

At 50 MKm the HLL profile gets the missile on target 52.4 seconds sooner and with about 2% higher terminal velocity compared to what we see used in the books with all 3 drives at 50% power.

(Somewhere buried on the board is a whole thread I created showing this in detail with graphs)

It is true that mixing acceleration settings would make for more flexible tactics. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the "splitter plate" technology used in the current generation MDM, you can't set different acceleration rates on the sequenced drive nodes. The "splitter plate" has to be adjusted and paired to the selected acceleration rate (effectively, "set" to damp the molecular distortion of a single power level) across all 3 sets of nodes. (I'm almost sure that I commented on this either in one of the books or in a post online quite some time ago.) This is something that R&D is still working on but has not yet solved.

So the different combinations of "high" and "low" acceleration which are being proposed are not workable at this time. They may become possible, but right now they aren't.

Ah. Thank you. If you'd said that before I'd missed (or forgotten it).

I may have been mislead by Honor's correction to White Haven in the Harrington Library back in In Enemy Hands, or Honor might have been thinking the R&D breakthrough of mixed drive settings would happen immenently.

In Enemy Hands wrote:"Certainly she came up with the concept, but R&D took it and ran with it. We're talking about a 'multistage' missile—one with three separate drives, which will give us a degree of tactical flexibility no previous navy could even dream of! We can preprogram the drives to come on-line with any timing and at any power setting we wish! Simply programming them to activate in immediate succession at maximum power would give us a hundred and eighty seconds of powered flight . . . and a powered attack range from rest of over fourteen and a half million kilometers with a terminal velocity of point-five-four cee. Or we can drop the drives' power settings to forty-six thousand gees and get five times the endurance—and a maximum powered missile envelope of over sixty-five million klicks with a terminal velocity of point-eight-one light-speed. That's a range of three-point-six light-minutes, and we can get even more than that if we use one or two 'stages' to accelerate the weapon, let it ride a ballistic course to a preprogrammed attack range, and then bring up the final 'stage' for terminal attack maneuvers at a full ninety-two thousand gravities.

I'd thought Honor was talking of using 2 drives at half power and the 3rd at full - but rereading I see she doesn't actually say that. She should have been speaking of 2 drives a full, a coast, and the final drive also at full. Though specifically mentioning the drive setting of just the final one doesn't seem to imply that.

But still, like I said, she could have been anticipating that that capability would be available once they were build and been disappointed it turned out to be harder than expected.

Though the Mantie R&D must have made some progress on it since the "baffle" splitter plate can handle protecting the CM derived 4th stage on the new system defense Mk23s from the 3 normal drives. (But they might be able to tune for that since you'd expect, and possible hardwire, those missiles to be tuned for max range with half power on all 3 main drives and then the final drive has to be hardwired (since you did say elsewhere that one of the tradeoffs of the overpowered CM style drives is that they can't be dialed back to lower acceleration)

runsforcelery wrote:What I hadn't considered, because for so many decades missile acceleration rates were basically hardwired by the various navies at either full acceleration or half acceleration, would be the possibility of dialing in an acceleration rate somewhere between those 2 extremes to max out performance over a given range. I'd have to play around with the numbers a bit, but it seems likely that in certain range brackets that would buy you a bit more time before the enemy's first salvo launched in reply could reach you. I'm inclined to think the window would probably be fairly short, however, and it wouldn't have any impact on the intervals between follow-up salvos, since that interval would be governed by the speed at which pods can be rolled. It might mean a slight advantage in closing speeds, getting the missiles through the defense of envelope a bit faster, but at first glance, I think that would probably be about it.

Fairly early on, probable in the appendix to Short Victorious War or the essay in Worlds of Honor it did mention that the Manties didn't hardware their missile settings, but that going lower than 50% gave more run time but resulting in less range and lower terminal velocity (so it must have been something of a local maximum).

I'd just assumed from that, and the fact that nobody every used an intermediate setting, that 100% power was another local maximum and the area between them the drive life fell off too quickly to usually be beneficial. That at, say, 75% drive power, you'd have at most only a few percent more run=time than at 100% so you'd be worse off picking that because the extra seconds couldn't make up for the reduced acceleration rate.
But that was just head cannon.


But there have always been some gaps in missile drive tech that looked odd from the outside, like why nobody had been able (or at least hadn't been willing to pay whatever trade-off was involved) to combine dual or multi-drive missile's baffle/splutter with the extended runtime of extended range missiles. A Mk16+ built around a pair of just 75|225 second drives would have a 50% better reach - making 45 MKm max powered range.
Arguably in the capacitor powered era a 2-drive ERM based DDM would have let you build a smaller capital missile that had nearly as much usable range as the Mk41s they actually build - giving you the ability to put more in your magazines or design smaller pods (hopefully allowing you to carry more of them)

But there's probably some tech reason that hasn't needed to be shared with us on why that's not actually a practical approach.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Though at those ranges, in fact any pre-Apollo effective range) even with normal Mk23s they should already be using at least the 1st drive at it's max setting (High-Low-Low drive profile) - but for some reason we never see them doing so in the books.

Quickest 3-drive profile by range is:
0 - 17 MKm - High-High-High (14-17 requires coast phase)
17 - 41 MKm - High-High-Low (33-41 requires coast phase)
41 - 70 MKm - High-Low-Low (50-70 requires coast phase)
70+ MkM - Low-Low-Low (65+ requires coast phase)

At 50 MKm the HLL profile gets the missile on target 52.4 seconds sooner and with about 2% higher terminal velocity compared to what we see used in the books with all 3 drives at 50% power.

(Somewhere buried on the board is a whole thread I created showing this in detail with graphs)

runsforcelery wrote:It is true that mixing acceleration settings would make for more flexible tactics. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the "splitter plate" technology used in the current generation MDM, you can't set different acceleration rates on the sequenced drive nodes. The "splitter plate" has to be adjusted and paired to the selected acceleration rate (effectively, "set" to damp the molecular distortion of a single power level) across all 3 sets of nodes. (I'm almost sure that I commented on this either in one of the books or in a post online quite some time ago.) This is something that R&D is still working on but has not yet solved.

So the different combinations of "high" and "low" acceleration which are being proposed are not workable at this time. They may become possible, but right now they aren't.

Ah. Thank you. If you'd said that before I'd missed (or forgotten it).

I may have been mislead by Honor's correction to White Haven in the Harrington Library back in In Enemy Hands, or Honor might have been thinking the R&D breakthrough of mixed drive settings would happen immenently.

In Enemy Hands wrote:"Certainly she came up with the concept, but R&D took it and ran with it. We're talking about a 'multistage' missile—one with three separate drives, which will give us a degree of tactical flexibility no previous navy could even dream of! We can preprogram the drives to come on-line with any timing and at any power setting we wish! Simply programming them to activate in immediate succession at maximum power would give us a hundred and eighty seconds of powered flight . . . and a powered attack range from rest of over fourteen and a half million kilometers with a terminal velocity of point-five-four cee. Or we can drop the drives' power settings to forty-six thousand gees and get five times the endurance—and a maximum powered missile envelope of over sixty-five million klicks with a terminal velocity of point-eight-one light-speed. That's a range of three-point-six light-minutes, and we can get even more than that if we use one or two 'stages' to accelerate the weapon, let it ride a ballistic course to a preprogrammed attack range, and then bring up the final 'stage' for terminal attack maneuvers at a full ninety-two thousand gravities.

I'd thought Honor was talking of using 2 drives at half power and the 3rd at full - but rereading I see she doesn't actually say that. She should have been speaking of 2 drives a full, a coast, and the final drive also at full. Though specifically mentioning the drive setting of just the final one doesn't seem to imply that.

But still, like I said, she could have been anticipating that that capability would be available once they were build and been disappointed it turned out to be harder than expected.

Though the Mantie R&D must have made some progress on it since the "baffle" splitter plate can handle protecting the CM derived 4th stage on the new system defense Mk23s from the 3 normal drives. (But they might be able to tune for that since you'd expect, and possible hardwire, those missiles to be tuned for max range with half power on all 3 main drives and then the final drive has to be hardwired (since you did say elsewhere that one of the tradeoffs of the overpowered CM style drives is that they can't be dialed back to lower acceleration)

runsforcelery wrote:What I hadn't considered, because for so many decades missile acceleration rates were basically hardwired by the various navies at either full acceleration or half acceleration, would be the possibility of dialing in an acceleration rate somewhere between those 2 extremes to max out performance over a given range. I'd have to play around with the numbers a bit, but it seems likely that in certain range brackets that would buy you a bit more time before the enemy's first salvo launched in reply could reach you. I'm inclined to think the window would probably be fairly short, however, and it wouldn't have any impact on the intervals between follow-up salvos, since that interval would be governed by the speed at which pods can be rolled. It might mean a slight advantage in closing speeds, getting the missiles through the defense of envelope a bit faster, but at first glance, I think that would probably be about it.

Fairly early on, probable in the appendix to Short Victorious War or the essay in Worlds of Honor it did mention that the Manties didn't hardware their missile settings, but that going lower than 50% gave more run time but resulting in less range and lower terminal velocity (so it must have been something of a local maximum).

I'd just assumed from that, and the fact that nobody every used an intermediate setting, that 100% power was another local maximum and the area between them the drive life fell off too quickly to usually be beneficial. That at, say, 75% drive power, you'd have at most only a few percent more run=time than at 100% so you'd be worse off picking that because the extra seconds couldn't make up for the reduced acceleration rate.
But that was just head cannon.


But there have always been some gaps in missile drive tech that looked odd from the outside, like why nobody had been able (or at least hadn't been willing to pay whatever trade-off was involved) to combine dual or multi-drive missile's baffle/splutter with the extended runtime of extended range missiles. A Mk16+ built around a pair of just 75|225 second drives would have a 50% better reach - making 45 MKm max powered range.
Arguably in the capacitor powered era a 2-drive ERM based DDM would have let you build a smaller capital missile that had nearly as much usable range as the Mk41s they actually build - giving you the ability to put more in your magazines or design smaller pods (hopefully allowing you to carry more of them)

But there's probably some tech reason that hasn't needed to be shared with us on why that's not actually a practical approach.

Actually, one of the projects which was in the works when Oyster Bay came along and wrecked so many other plans was an upgrade of the Mark 16 to use the enhanced endurance drives. Once the Sollies got into the act, the original Mark 16 was plenty good enough and they had other priorities than putting the Mark 16(ER) into service. It will be turning up eventually, of course.

And the 4-stage system defense missile didn't require any additional development in splitter technology. It was simply a size issue. The RMN calculated that the Mark 23 was perfectly adequate for shipboard service and it was already so big it was putting a significant squeeze on magazine capacities, so they went with the 3-stage variant for shipboard use and designated the 4-stage for system defense, where missile size was immaterial, a larger volume had to be covered, and Mycroft would be available to provide fire control over that volume. Of course, the full scale production and deployment of that missile was another thing Oyster Bay screwed up, so they ended up using Mark 23s in the system defense role, as well. Ideally there would have been a 3-tiered missile tree: the Mark 16 for cruisers and battlecruisers; the Mark 23 for SDs; and the Mark 24 for system defense. And that is probably where they will end up eventually.

runsforcelery wrote:Actually, one of the projects which was in the works when Oyster Bay came along and wrecked so many other plans was an upgrade of the Mark 16 to use the enhanced endurance drives. Once the Sollies got into the act, the original Mark 16 was plenty good enough and they had other priorities than putting the Mark 16(ER) into service. It will be turning up eventually, of course.

Ah cool. Thanks for sharing that.

runsforcelery wrote:And the 4-stage system defense missile didn't require any additional development in splitter technology. It was simply a size issue. The RMN calculated that the Mark 23 was perfectly adequate for shipboard service and it was already so big it was putting a significant squeeze on magazine capacities, so they went with the 3-stage variant for shipboard use and designated the 4-stage for system defense, where missile size was immaterial, a larger volume had to be covered, and Mycroft would be available to provide fire control over that volume. Of course, the full scale production and deployment of that missile was another thing Oyster Bay screwed up, so they ended up using Mark 23s in the system defense role, as well. Ideally there would have been a 3-tiered missile tree: the Mark 16 for cruisers and battlecruisers; the Mark 23 for SDs; and the Mark 24 for system defense. And that is probably where they will end up eventually.

Oh. I thought since you said that the current splitter design couldn't handled mixed acceleration settings AND you'd said in the past that the 4th drive of the Mk23-F was CM/Viper derived (so I assume about 130,000 gees for 75 seconds) that it would be harder to protect that 4th drive from the 46,000 gee half-power main 3 drives (or even the less likely setting of 92,000 gee full power).

The differing drive tech making the 23-F an inherently mixed acceleration setting design.

Jonathan_S wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:Actually, one of the projects which was in the works when Oyster Bay came along and wrecked so many other plans was an upgrade of the Mark 16 to use the enhanced endurance drives. Once the Sollies got into the act, the original Mark 16 was plenty good enough and they had other priorities than putting the Mark 16(ER) into service. It will be turning up eventually, of course.

Ah cool. Thanks for sharing that.

runsforcelery wrote:
And the 4-stage system defense missile didn't require any additional development in splitter technology. It was simply a size issue. The RMN calculated that the Mark 23 was perfectly adequate for shipboard service and it was already so big it was putting a significant squeeze on magazine capacities, so they went with the 3-stage variant for shipboard use and designated the 4-stage for system defense, where missile size was immaterial, a larger volume had to be covered, and Mycroft would be available to provide fire control over that volume. Of course, the full scale production and deployment of that missile was another thing Oyster Bay screwed up, so they ended up using Mark 23s in the system defense role, as well. Ideally there would have been a 3-tiered missile tree: the Mark 16 for cruisers and battlecruisers; the Mark 23 for SDs; and the Mark 24 for system defense. And that is probably where they will end up eventually.

Oh. I thought since you said that the current splitter design couldn't handled mixed acceleration settings AND you'd said in the past that the 4th drive of the Mk23-F was CM/Viper derived (so I assume about 130,000 gees for 75 seconds) that it would be harder to protect that 4th drive from the 46,000 gee half-power main 3 drives (or even the less likely setting of 92,000 gee full power).

The differing drive tech making the 23-F an inherently mixed acceleration setting design.

That's because the system defense variant is a true multi-stage weapon, like Cataphract, but I don't think I ever said it used a CM as the final stage. I hope I didn't, anyway, because it doesn't! Sure you're not confusing it with the SLN's Cataphract, which does use a CM drive for the final stage?

The system defense missile does use an entirely separate missile "upper stage" mounted far enough from the main stage drive nodes that its nodes are unaffected by them during their boost phase. I don't think I said in print that the final stage was derived from the Viper, but I suppose I might have. That's how I thought about it at an earlier stage in the process, although I saw it as a much more capable vehicle which simply used the insanely powerful drive to power in through the target's inner defenses. Conceptually, it actually is a lot like Cataphract. I think in my current notes the last stage has its own splitter and has essentially a smaller, more lightweight 2-drive capability just to drive the defenders extra crazy, but I'm still playing with it, since Oyster Bay was kind enough to keep it from going into production and nailing my feet down on it in print just yet.

runsforcelery wrote:That's because the system defense variant is a true multi-stage weapon, like Cataphract, but I don't think I ever said it used a CM as the final stage. I hope I didn't, anyway, because it doesn't! Sure you're not confusing it with the SLN's Cataphract, which does use a CM drive for the final stage?

The system defense missile does use an entirely separate missile "upper stage" mounted far enough from the main stage drive nodes that its nodes are unaffected by them during their boost phase. I don't think I said in print that the final stage was derived from the Viper, but I suppose I might have. That's how I thought about it at an earlier stage in the process, although I saw it as a much more capable vehicle which simply used the insanely powerful drive to power in through the target's inner defenses. Conceptually, it actually is a lot like Cataphract. I think in my current notes the last stage has its own splitter and has essentially a smaller, more lightweight 2-drive capability just to drive the defenders extra crazy, but I'm still playing with it, since Oyster Bay was kind enough to keep it from going into production and nailing my feet down on it in print just yet.

For what it's worth I didn't think they'd stuck a Viper derived stage on top of the missile - I had assumed they'd figured out a way to put an overpowered drive inspired by CM drive design but that could drive something big enough to carry the kind of sensors and massive warhead you'd want on a system defense missile. I wasn't thinking in terms of actually staging, just vaguely assuming they'd be able to merge it somehow into the stack of drives at the rear of the MDM.

Hmm, it seems to have aged off the forum, but dredging it up from my personal cheat-sheet of your posts (yes a dangerous thing to have) I think I was thinking of this excerpt of your post from 31-Jan-2012 in the thread possible new destroyer design

runsforcelery wrote:The system defense pods are designed to spend literally months on station between servicing and are loaded with missiles which have even heavier lasing rods and more powerful laserheads than the Mk 23, and (in the latest version) a four-stage drive to give the birds more endurance, a longer powered envelope, and much higher acceleration in the last stage of attack (the fourth stage turns out a higher acceleration for a briefer period than any of the other three stages)

I thought there was also some description of them in the books but if so it's eluding me.

So you did say "higher acceleration for a briefer period" which led me to think CM derived. But a 6 year old forum post is hardly binding. (And I think over time that hint did conflate with the Cataphract design in my mind to make me remember the post as being more definitive that it was.)

runsforcelery wrote:The system defense missile does use an entirely separate missile "upper stage" mounted far enough from the main stage drive nodes that its nodes are unaffected by them during their boost phase. I don't think I said in print that the final stage was derived from the Viper, but I suppose I might have. That's how I thought about it at an earlier stage in the process, although I saw it as a much more capable vehicle which simply used the insanely powerful drive to power in through the target's inner defenses. Conceptually, it actually is a lot like Cataphract. I think in my current notes the last stage has its own splitter and has essentially a smaller, more lightweight 2-drive capability just to drive the defenders extra crazy, but I'm still playing with it, since Oyster Bay was kind enough to keep it from going into production and nailing my feet down on it in print just yet.

Though all the 4(+) stage designs seem to run into the light-speed issue.

Normally your descriptions of the missile acceleration, terminal velocity, and powered range seem to ignore relativistic effect (which does keep the math tractable). But if you apply the same calculations that say from rest 540 seconds at 46,000 gees gives you the canonical 0.812c at 65,726,640 km and add a 4th drive the 720 seconds at that accel would give you 1.083 c -- Oops.


Switching to relativistic equations now, in additional to being more of a pain to calculate, would conflict with existing statements about MDM performance.

(My guess was that you'd just declare a fiat 0.9c or so "top speed" with the missile either being incapable of accelerating past that, or automatically destroyed in the attempt, which still allows the final stage(s) to be used for lateral deflections of the missile's course without letting impeller driven objects exceed the local speed of light)

Jonathan_S wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:The system defense missile does use an entirely separate missile "upper stage" mounted far enough from the main stage drive nodes that its nodes are unaffected by them during their boost phase. I don't think I said in print that the final stage was derived from the Viper, but I suppose I might have. That's how I thought about it at an earlier stage in the process, although I saw it as a much more capable vehicle which simply used the insanely powerful drive to power in through the target's inner defenses. Conceptually, it actually is a lot like Cataphract. I think in my current notes the last stage has its own splitter and has essentially a smaller, more lightweight 2-drive capability just to drive the defenders extra crazy, but I'm still playing with it, since Oyster Bay was kind enough to keep it from going into production and nailing my feet down on it in print just yet.

Though all the 4(+) stage designs seem to run into the light-speed issue.

Normally your descriptions of the missile acceleration, terminal velocity, and powered range seem to ignore relativistic effect (which does keep the math tractable). But if you apply the same calculations that say from rest 540 seconds at 46,000 gees gives you the canonical 0.812c at 65,726,640 km and add a 4th drive the 720 seconds at that accel would give you 1.083 c -- Oops.


Switching to relativistic equations now, in additional to being more of a pain to calculate, would conflict with existing statements about MDM performance.

(My guess was that you'd just declare a fiat 0.9c or so "top speed" with the missile either being incapable of accelerating past that, or automatically destroyed in the attempt, which still allows the final stage(s) to be used for lateral deflections of the missile's course without letting impeller driven objects exceed the local speed of light)

Alas, you know me so well. . . .