Do we actually need SD(P)s?

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I could possible make an argument for a 1.5 - 2.5 mton ammo ship design being a useful add on to a CL or CA squadron. But it'd be one with only strategic military speed - to keep costs somewhat affordable it'd omit defenses and high tactical speed. It's job is to power-up and hand off pods to the cruiser and then stay way the hell out of the way. (Either pop off into hyper or hide deep in the system - depending on mission profile). But then it wouldn't be rolling pods between enemy salvos because if you need a ship to do that you probably need a real BC(P) or SD(P).

I do not follow: how do you get high strategic speed without high tactical speed? Are you saying that it is to be able to travel in higher hyperspace bands than commercial ships, but under impeller drive it only has commercial speed? Basically having unequal beta nodes versus alpha nodes? If it cannot move fast within the hyper limit, then shouldn't it always stay outside?

Mil spec hyper generater and rad shields with commercial drive nodes. This is what the RMN did in the JMNT freighters. It allows the freighters to hit the higher hyper bands that commercial ships do not use. It still has the normal acceleration but higher speeds in band and higher hyper bands.

So higher strategic speeds, with zero tactical advantages.

Jonathan_S wrote:
So now it's not a relatively cheap ammunition ship - it's going to need roughly the speed, acceleration, and defenses of a warship. At that point it's probably at least 75-80% the cost of an upsized (50% larger) Agamemnon-class BC(P) but without the offensive fire control. It'd be more cost effective to just build yourself a BC(LP) and send it along instead of this high-speed survivable overpriced ammo ship.

No, you just need one LAC, who can invisibly tow your two million tons of pods into the enemy formation before firing them all.

Jonathan_S wrote:So now it's not a relatively cheap ammunition ship - it's going to need roughly the speed, acceleration, and defenses of a warship. At that point it's probably at least 75-80% the cost of an upsized (50% larger) Agamemnon-class BC(P) but without the offensive fire control. It'd be more cost effective to just build yourself a BC(LP) and send it along instead of this high-speed survivable overpriced ammo ship.

Would a BC(LP) be... you know... a battleship?

I think the problem with this design would be the same as what plagued the Agammemnon BC(P)s: not enough armour to compensate the structural integrity drawback of the hollow core. There's a minimum size that will support the armour necessary to defend the hollow core and that appears to be above the 1.75 Mton of the Agammemnon, probably above the Nike's 2.5 too. In fact, if the ship does need to be better armoured than a BC and thus may lose acceleration, it would indeed qualify as a BB.

At that point, the question becomes: is it worth the cost?

I think the answer is No. The only battle we know where the GA forces at hand weren't sufficient was Hypatia and the limitation was defence, not offence. Adding more offensive missiles carried by an FSV wouldn't have helped: most of the missiles were controlled by the sole Nike-class ship (HMS Phantom) on the scene, with the CAs contributing little, so they couldn't have thrown more missiles at the Sollies at a time in hopes of eliminating the danger sooner. It would have helped some as having more Mk16 DDM missiles would have allowed Phantom to fire from further away, though accepting lower pK.

But if the support ship couldn't stand in formation and contribute to the defence of her consort ships, Kotouč would still have suffered nearly the same fate.

Kotouč needed more than one more Nike's worth of missile defence. A BB or DN worth, scaled up from a Nike. But at that point, this ship type may be too expensive compared to a BC, but not economical enough compared to an SD.

In fact, since all Kotouč needed was defence, there was a ship type available that would have halped and was even part of his Task Group; the CLAC. Those are DN-sized but because of their LAC complement, they have disproportionate defensive capability compared to a DN.

A CLAC coupled with a pair of BC(L)s would be unbeatable.

SD(P)s are something you don't need until you need them. You'll come to need them as soon as they're discontinued. Personally, I view them like the huge gas guzzling vehicles with two gas tanks. There's less need to refill with more carrying capacity. If you are contemplating invading Home Systems, better go loaded for Peak Bear.

At any rate, I was under the impression an SD(P) also infers a corresponding increase in CMs?

It seems an SD(P) would offer much better tactical flexibility.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:I'm wondering if there is a role for a ship that would admittedly be a bit of both worlds and not necessarily better, mainly because a Sag-C + an FSV is quite lethal. What think ye all of a ship the size of the new Nike-class with the ability to shunt pods out of say the back 25-30% or whatever percentage you decide... interesting weapons mix or no?

I'm primarily thinking about actions like Hypatia, by the way. If Phantom had the ability to drop a few pod-based salvos in between or in conjunction with every 4-5 rounds before their control links were going to be savaged by the arrival of the SLN mega-salvo, wouldn't that have ruined Hadju Gyozo's day even worse?

Too much compromise of function for too little additional capacity, I'd think. Perhaps the Andy design of hard point mounted external pods designed to be jettisoned would work better. Or perhaps a variant of the FSV's dorsal cargo pod.

The problem appears to be one of "have to get rid of the pods first to fight the ship, effectively clearing the ship of anything that can interfere with CM and PLC clusters, where having internal stowage gives tactical flexibility.

That said, we have TextEv that the RMN's anti-Buxcaneer doctrine is temporarily going to be the Agammemnons. IIRC that' 330 pods of 14 Mk16-G missiles less ECM and PenAids, meaning that one-Aggie with Mk16 pods could have stood off all or nearly all of the SLN forces in Hypatia by shooting itself dry from WELL beyond Cataphract range.

Speaking of which, why did Phantom close with the Sag-B's to begin with? Wouldn't it have been a better battle tactic to separate the two and let Phantom open the ball at say 20MM Km using the MK16s from a divergent course and do as much damage as possible (including using the Loreleis to simulate additional Sag-Cs BEFORE the Sag-Bs lit up? Thoughts?

tlb wrote:I do not follow: how do you get high strategic speed without high tactical speed? Are you saying that it is to be able to travel in higher hyperspace bands than commercial ships, but under impeller drive it only has commercial speed? Basically having unequal beta nodes versus alpha nodes? If it cannot move fast within the hyper limit, then shouldn't it always stay outside?

Strategic speed is roughly 54.64% hyper generator, 15.5% rad shielding, 2.25% acceleration (the exact ratio varies. Short trips, of just a few days, let acceleration have a larger impact, while grav waves drastically reducing acceleration's impact on total time). Even a merchant ship with its low acceleration reached max cruising speed in a day or so and a day is a relatively small percentage of most interstellar trips.


Say a Nike-class BC(L) had to travel 50 lightyears. Given the acceleration from HoS its safe 80% accel is 539.4 gees, it'd cruise in the Theta bands at 0.6c, and would including acceleration cover the distance in about 6 days, 7 hours.

A merchant ships capable of 160 gees safe accel, cruising at its max 0.5c speed in the Delta bands would instead cover that distance in about 17 days, 8 hours!

If you gave it the warship's acceleration it'd cut that down a whopping 2.25% to around 16 days, 22 hours.

Instead keep its low accel and give it the warship's rad shielding (and resulting 0.6c top speed) and it'd cut down the transit 15.5% to around 14 days, 15 hours.

Or keep the low accel and slower top speed, but give it the warship's hyper generator and it'd cut down the transit 54.64% to around 7 days, 21 hours.


So a merchant ship with commercial nodes and compensators, but military rad shielding and hyper generator, has around 80% of the strategic speed of a Nike-class and the percentage gets better as you travel longer distances (or as you use grav waves).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:So now it's not a relatively cheap ammunition ship - it's going to need roughly the speed, acceleration, and defenses of a warship. At that point it's probably at least 75-80% the cost of an upsized (50% larger) Agamemnon-class BC(P) but without the offensive fire control. It'd be more cost effective to just build yourself a BC(LP) and send it along instead of this high-speed survivable overpriced ammo ship.

Would a BC(LP) be... you know... a battleship?

Probably not; quite.
The only BB we know much about was the Peep's Triumphant-class which was a 4.5 mton design; so still approaching twice as big as a Nike-class's 2.5 mtons. The Nikes are probably as large as some much older BBs but a BC(LP) is probably smaller than anything you'd build now and call a BB(P).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I think the problem with this design would be the same as what plagued the Agammemnon BC(P)s: not enough armour to compensate the structural integrity drawback of the hollow core. There's a minimum size that will support the armour necessary to defend the hollow core and that appears to be above the 1.75 Mton of the Agammemnon, probably above the Nike's 2.5 too. In fact, if the ship does need to be better armoured than a BC and thus may lose acceleration, it would indeed qualify as a BB.

At that point, the question becomes: is it worth the cost?

I think the answer is No. The only battle we know where the GA forces at hand weren't sufficient was Hypatia and the limitation was defence, not offence. Adding more offensive missiles carried by an FSV wouldn't have helped: most of the missiles were controlled by the sole Nike-class ship (HMS Phantom) on the scene, with the CAs contributing little, so they couldn't have thrown more missiles at the Sollies at a time in hopes of eliminating the danger sooner. It would have helped some as having more Mk16 DDM missiles would have allowed Phantom to fire from further away, though accepting lower pK.

But if the support ship couldn't stand in formation and contribute to the defence of her consort ships, Kotouč would still have suffered nearly the same fate.

Kotouč needed more than one more Nike's worth of missile defence. A BB or DN worth, scaled up from a Nike. But at that point, this ship type may be too expensive compared to a BC, but not economical enough compared to an SD.

In fact, since all Kotouč needed was defence, there was a ship type available that would have halped and was even part of his Task Group; the CLAC. Those are DN-sized but because of their LAC complement, they have disproportionate defensive capability compared to a DN.

A CLAC coupled with a pair of BC(L)s would be unbeatable.

But I tend to agree. While an extra .75 mton would buy you some additional defenses and toughness the BC(LP) still wouldn't be as survivable as a BC(L).

I wasn't actually advocating that you build a BC(LP) - I was more advocating against building a ammo ship designed to fly as part of a cruising squadron to roll it pods during combat.
If you're planned to be in combat you need to be a proper warship. If you're not a proper warship you need to plan to stay out of combat range.

(Plans fail of course, and sometimes the local situation is critical enough to risk or even lose a non-combat ship by putting it in a place it doesn't belong. But the ship design and doctrine needs to be to keep non-warships out of combat when at all possible)

SharkHunter wrote:Speaking of which, why did Phantom close with the Sag-B's to begin with? Wouldn't it have been a better battle tactic to separate the two and let Phantom open the ball at say 20MM Km using the MK16s from a divergent course and do as much damage as possible (including using the Loreleis to simulate additional Sag-Cs BEFORE the Sag-Bs lit up? Thoughts?

I think it was the element of surprise. Firing Mk14 and Mk16 at the same time increased the number of missiles in each salvo. Task Force 1030 was searching for TG 110 the moment the first missiles lit up their drives, so time was limited. Kotouč probably thought it was tactically better to deliver as many missiles as he could before he was found and the enemy missiles arrived on him.

Remember they didn't expect any of the ships to survive. They had to deliver as much destructive power in as few salvos as they could. Plus all the gains from being closer anyway (shorter control loop, better firing solutions, etc.)

Even if it didn't cause TF1030 to find them sooner, firing a smaller Mk16 salvo might not be a good idea, regardless of where Phantom was. Having 2x as many missiles in one salvo does not mean 2x as effective. I imagine the curve looks like an S: for both low and very high missile counts, doubling the number of missiles yields no little increase in effectiveness. But in the central part, doubling the number of missiles should more than double the effectiveness, killing 3 or 4x as many enemies, as the missiles saturate the defensive fire the enemy ships can put per volume. If I'm right, then Phantom firing a salvo half as massive without the Mk14 of the Sag-B would have destroyed 1 to 2 enemy BCs per salvo. And if Phantom is firing from further out, then the pK is even lower.

Jonathan_S wrote:So now it's not a relatively cheap ammunition ship - it's going to need roughly the speed, acceleration, and defenses of a warship. At that point it's probably at least 75-80% the cost of an upsized (50% larger) Agamemnon-class BC(P) but without the offensive fire control. It'd be more cost effective to just build yourself a BC(LP) and send it along instead of this high-speed survivable overpriced ammo ship.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Would a BC(LP) be... you know... a battleship?

Probably not; quite.

Jonathan_S wrote:The only BB we know much about was the Peep's Triumphant-class which was a 4.5 mton design; so still approaching twice as big as a Nike-class's 2.5 mtons. The Nikes are probably as large as some much older BBs but a BC(LP) is probably smaller than anything you'd build now and call a BB(P).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I think the problem with this design would be the same as what plagued the Agammemnon BC(P)s: not enough armour to compensate the structural integrity drawback of the hollow core. There's a minimum size that will support the armour necessary to defend the hollow core and that appears to be above the 1.75 Mton of the Agammemnon, probably above the Nike's 2.5 too. In fact, if the ship does need to be better armoured than a BC and thus may lose acceleration, it would indeed qualify as a BB.

originally, BBs started at 1.5 mtons. we have the original Thorston ( orig. Manticore) battleships at ~ 2 mtons, which were retired before 1900. The Triumphants were at the upper end of the range , with DNs starting at ~5-5.5 mtons. So where that bc/bb break point is NOW has not really been defined, with Manticore designing ships based on purpose, and defining the sizes to fit.

--snipping, but totally agreeing with what you said--

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Speaking of which, why did Phantom close with the Sag-B's to begin with? Wouldn't it have been a better battle tactic to separate the two and let Phantom open the ball at say 20MM Km using the MK16s from a divergent course and do as much damage as possible (including using the Loreleis to simulate additional Sag-Cs BEFORE the Sag-Bs lit up? Thoughts?

...
Remember they didn't expect any of the ships to survive. They had to deliver as much destructive power in as few salvos as they could. Plus all the gains from being closer anyway (shorter control loop, better firing solutions, etc.)
...
But in the central part, doubling the number of missiles should more than double the effectiveness, killing 3 or 4x as many enemies, as the missiles saturate the defensive fire the enemy ships can put per volume. If I'm right, then Phantom firing a salvo half as massive without the Mk14 of the Sag-B would have destroyed 1 to 2 enemy BCs per salvo. And if Phantom is firing from further out, then the pK is even lower.

So... I agree that TF 1030's tactical choices were perfect both plot-wise and not-bad tactically... It is one of the sections in UH that I really like. So this is in the nature of not-criticizing the dead, but learning from the after-action report.

My alternative thought is that -- as an example, Phantom closes to maybe 25Kmm kilometers, pops out enough Loreleis to simulate 9 ships, and launches stacked salvos, off bore yada yada yada to simulate the ship... And the SLN fires off that massive salvo at ONE ship which is basically out of effective control range anyway.

Ilkova then starts hunting for the flagship early, and if they mission kill 1-2 BCs per salvo and massively damage a couple more (say a double-stacked salvo, 30 each at 2 BCs where they think the squadron flagships may be, 20 each at a couple other ships just to be nasty). We'll give them 10-12 double stacked salvos, call it 20 SLN battle cruiser mission kills, another 10-20 with critical damage AND command and control confusion. Then the Saganami(s) (with Lorelies, exactly the same as in the boo) open up at an even closer range on the least damaged ships in double salvos, etc., etc. etc. but with no massive salvo headed their way.

I'm wondering if Phantom is still mission killed but the Sag-Bs survive?