Do we actually need SD(P)s?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Agreed. I'm thinking more along the lines of a "minimal squadron utilization" where the RMN may be called in to deal with some mell of a hess in the verge, post- Uncompromising Honor. Same amount of tonnage, but the Sags could patrol a large sector and concentrate as needed to defeat, for now -- anything short of a Nike, etc. Throw in maybe a 2x contingent of Rolands and an FSV, you've probably got adequate "small sector or part sector" coverage for around the same tonnage as a Nike. Yes/No?

I think so too. A Nike can outfight a squadron of Saganamis and will outlast too (has more missiles), but it really shines when flying in formation. But a Nike is also much more expensive than a CA, so the RMN and allies can get that many more platforms for the same cost, which means covering more systems in patrol.

Still, put a Rear Admiral in the flag bridge of a Nike, give him a squadron of Sag-Cs, a CLAC and/or an FSV, he or she can patrol a lot of systems and deal with any conceivable threat, up to and including all known non-allied SDFs. The largest SDF was Beowulf's, so the next best (which might be Mannerheim's) would have about two dozen SDs.

About 5 years ago, I posted a thread about this - "Patrolling the Talbot Quadrant with Medium forces in 1922pd". We had not heard of the FSV class at the time, thus my conclusion then was the "Heavy" of the patrol should be some BC(p)s, for the very reason the FSV is now around. But with the FSV in the picture, it makes more sense to have the Nike as the Flag. Instead of a CLAC, I would have a 2nd FSV with a LAC tender module or 2. This would keep the squadron fleeter in a strategic standpoint, and allow the BC(p)s and CLACS to be kept at strategic reserve nodes.

Let's face it, BC(p)s are at their best when used in squadron form - they can beat up a SD division easily and (Like CLACS) should be seen more as strategic assets than medium patrol assets.

Theemile wrote:Let's face it, BC(p)s are at their best when used in squadron form - they can beat up a SD division easily and (Like CLACS) should be seen more as strategic assets than medium patrol assets.

It's tricky to be sure what BC(P)s are best for. We have not seen them perform in combat away from wallers, which they find rather... difficult. Presumably they are utterly devastating against anything below the wall, even if heavily outnumbered.

The Hypatia battle is one situation where I think a BC(P) might have been better than a Nike - because although they have fewer missiles(~3-5k vs ~6000), the BC(P) could have rolled all her pods before starting to shoot, whereas Phantom died with her magazines nearly three-quarters full.

A BC(P) would still have died(the plan was to force all those SLN pods to fire at RMN ships instead of Hypatian stations), but there would have been absolutely nothing left for Arngrim to shoot at.

munroburton wrote:

Theemile wrote:Let's face it, BC(p)s are at their best when used in squadron form - they can beat up a SD division easily and (Like CLACS) should be seen more as strategic assets than medium patrol assets.

It's tricky to be sure what BC(P)s are best for. We have not seen them perform in combat away from wallers, which they find rather... difficult. Presumably they are utterly devastating against anything below the wall, even if heavily outnumbered.

The Hypatia battle is one situation where I think a BC(P) might have been better than a Nike - because although they have fewer missiles(~3-5k vs ~6000), the BC(P) could have rolled all her pods before starting to shoot, whereas Phantom died with her magazines nearly three-quarters full.

A BC(P) would still have died(the plan was to force all those SLN pods to fire at RMN ships instead of Hypatian stations), but there would have been absolutely nothing left for Arngrim to shoot at.

Any way you shake it, Manty doctrine is pod heavy. As we've seen multiple times, pods are the big force multiplier. Any time you have a podlayer or an ammoship with a mobile force, that force and LL be that much stronger.

I hesitate thinking out loud.
I don't hesitate long enough.

Let's build SDs in a significantly different manner. SCS (Space Control Ship). SD sized? probably. Built to BC dimensions? Probably doable as well.

Trade the "Hammer Head" ends for "Hammer Head Shark" ends, with the head "wings" between the wedge layers. Thereon are mounted various sensors & missile control links, the usual, PLUS a turret or three (middle & both ends), on larger ships mount said turrets top and bottom of the head. In these turrets? Our (formerly) side-mounted Grasers. Said turrets have 180+ degrees of view on the "wing" ends, and 270 for the center. Cross my T at Energy range, I dare you.

Side mounts are missile pods on tracks, and LAC ports.

Wayfarer had tracks with pods thereon, a cobbled afterthought modification to a freighter. This designed-in track is oval, going side to side, with pods side-to-side, with drive motors to bring a loaded pod to bear when the previous pod has fired. The now-empty pod can be reloaded as it shifts from one side to the other. When the pod arrives at the other side, it's ready to fire again. How many pods are on this track varies with ship diameter and pod size. How many tracks of pods varies with the length of the ship, and the size of the pod.

The LAC ports house (you guessed it) LACs. Two types: Missile Control LACs (MCL) and LAC Defense LACs (LDL). LACs deploy as soon as you know there's a fight coming, they need to be within missile control range of the targets (this is a poor man's Apollo). Broadsides of missiles go where the firing ship tells them to go, until the MCLs can take over to get them to target. Said MCLs are high-priority targets, thus the need for LDLs.

Since the pods are within the sidewalls, proximity-kill is not a worry; we skip the "rolling the pods" time; we launch when the MCLs and LDLs are in position. A SMALL amount of AI lets the first missiles take a more circuitous path to the target, later launches take a more direct path, and all the missiles arrive together. This is done today with artillery (Fire high-angle, then increasingly lower angles with a smaller powder charges); the Archer gun system with 1 barrel can put 6 rounds on the target simultaneously. We can do that with missiles.

MCLs are in effect large self-powered keyholes, hopefully with FTL comms to the flagship. LDLs are missile killers and LAC killers.

MCL/LDL teams can be scattered around the system (pre-positioned) for pirate interdiction. The MDM coast-phase can be days long, if we build them that way. MCL/LDL teams can lie doggo if they are close enough to the pirate, and can stealth-creep a-la Hancock Station. 1g acceleration will get you there. Maybe even this week.

Improvement ideas welcome!

Not addressed: Freighter arrives with pirate in hot pursuit.

All in one ships tend to be less than great at everything. Fun if you're allowed a single ship of any size/cost to operate solo - in which case throwing the kitchen sink in gives you crazy flexibility; at the expense of being less capable than a more dedicated design of the same size/cost.

But just as an example LAC bays take up huge amounts of broadside room, penetrate very deeply into the hull (preventing you from having an interior armor belt, and frankly pushing the normal engineering spaces from the center of the ship fore and aft towards the hammerheads. So a ship with them is at a significant disadvantage in combat at missile or energy ranges.
It can still be worth having CLACs that can stay near the heavy hitters - to provide a place to reammo screening LACs; but they're far more vulnerable than a DN of the same size.

And turrets have been shot down before. They need to be too big and end up limiting the size and power of the energy weapons they mount, plus reduce accuracy (your energy mounts need to be aimed to a minuscule fraction of a degree to hit a ship sized target at a half million km. (Plus opening gunports in the sidewall so they can shoot through works, poorly, when the mount can swing that far around.

Also a turret either makes the ship slower or less powerful because the acceleration is dictated primarily by the size and shape of the compensation field. So to mount a turret such that it doesn't slow the ship down you have to shrink the ship volume so the turret doesn't stick out any further than the hull used to. Otherwise if the turret sticks out further you take an acceleration hit compared to the non-turret ship of the same hull size.


The pearls of weber (infodump.thefifthimperium.com) seems to be acting up right now, but there are a bunch of David's archived posts over the years and IIRC turrets are address and dismissed in some of them. As are CLAC(P)s or other CLAC + main combatant designs.

Whatever.

Jonathan_S wrote:
And turrets have been shot down before. They need to be too big and end up limiting the size and power of the energy weapons they mount, plus reduce accuracy (your energy mounts need to be aimed to a minuscule fraction of a degree to hit a ship sized target at a half million km. (Plus opening gunports in the sidewall so they can shoot through works, poorly, when the mount can swing that far around.

Also a turret either makes the ship slower or less powerful because the acceleration is dictated primarily by the size and shape of the compensation field. So to mount a turret such that it doesn't slow the ship down you have to shrink the ship volume so the turret doesn't stick out any further than the hull used to. Otherwise if the turret sticks out further you take an acceleration hit compared to the non-turret ship of the same hull size..

WAAAYYY too narrow of thinking. Possible without slowing down ship? Sure. Pop up turret GRASER battery just like coastal defense guns. No problem. A coastal defense gun has very little weight in its turret/mechanism compared to the gun itself. 20 years ago when this was discussed, the actual reason was DW wanted age of sail type battles. Same reason we cannot have CM pods, etc. Authorial fiat for plot reasons.

If you do not like coastal defense gun versions of GRASERS, then the ful enchilada of turrets with say, Several Grasers per turret which look like a pancake, as it is the top "slice" of the ship, fitting inside compensator field. Of course DW rather blatantly disregarded his own compensator/impeller field rules creating the double ended hammerhead with hull tractored pods... HUNDREDS of them in the case of SD's, so...

As for ports, aiming, that is all done via the lens anyways which ties directly to the sidewall/port. So, the positions would be +/- 180 degrees where the end turrets(assuming no super firing turrets) as the end of ship is in the way, would be integers of 90 degrees for bow/stern fun.

TheMadPenguin wrote:Whatever.

if we have not lost you already, there is no reason to go away.

As I mentioned to another a few days ago, you are stepping into a 25 year continuous conversation. The ideas you mentioned have all been argued by others before, though not necessarily in the same post, and have been discussed throughly, with the author weighing in on many of them. JonathanS and Relax are two of the old hands around here, all of us having posted to boards which preceeded this one.

So you were not just shot down arbitrarily, we have just already have discussed this, and gotten the answers.

Go take a look at the link JonathanS provided, there is a massive amount of detail there, collected over the years.

TheMadPenguin wrote:Trade the "Hammer Head" ends for "Hammer Head Shark" ends, with the head "wings" between the wedge layers. Thereon are mounted various sensors & missile control links, the usual, PLUS a turret or three (middle & both ends), on larger ships mount said turrets top and bottom of the head. In these turrets? Our (formerly) side-mounted Grasers. Said turrets have 180+ degrees of view on the "wing" ends, and 270 for the center. Cross my T at Energy range, I dare you.

Actually, no, they don't, because most angles are blocked by the wedge itself. There's no sense in mounting a turret that points downwards or upwards from the ship, since it can only fire at the wedge roof or floor. I'm having trouble finding the official numbers, but the throat is something like 110 km tall, on a wedge length of 190 km. That means the angle from the ship that doesn't isn't blocked by the wedge is atan(55/95) = 0.52 rad ≃ 30° up or down. This is of course much worse facing backwards, as the kilt is only 40 km tall. So the best place to mount the turret would be facing forwards in the fore aspect (afterwards in the after aspect), not upwards or downwards.

Second, if someone got to energy range to you, something has seriously gone wrong already. Note how not single battle in the last 7 T-years in-universe have been done with energy mounts. The trend has been to reduce the number of heavy energy mounts in favour of missile launchers and point defence.

Side mounts are missile pods on tracks, and LAC ports.

Wayfarer had tracks with pods thereon, a cobbled afterthought modification to a freighter. This designed-in track is oval, going side to side, with pods side-to-side, with drive motors to bring a loaded pod to bear when the previous pod has fired. The now-empty pod can be reloaded as it shifts from one side to the other. When the pod arrives at the other side, it's ready to fire again. How many pods are on this track varies with ship diameter and pod size. How many tracks of pods varies with the length of the ship, and the size of the pod.

What are you trying to solve with this? Ships can fire 180° off-bore, so the broadside not facing the enemy can still fire. What's the point in shuttling missiles from one side to the other?

And how do you account for the point defence and sensors, while those pods are going around, plus the space for their tracks?

The LAC ports house (you guessed it) LACs. Two types: Missile Control LACs (MCL) and LAC Defense LACs (LDL). LACs deploy as soon as you know there's a fight coming, they need to be within missile control range of the targets (this is a poor man's Apollo). Broadsides of missiles go where the firing ship tells them to go, until the MCLs can take over to get them to target. Said MCLs are high-priority targets, thus the need for LDLs.

Interesting idea. I've seen the same discussed by using Ghost Rider to extend range, instead of the Mk23E.

But do LACs, even dedicated ones, have enough computing power to control hundreds of shipkiller missiles in a salvo and accurately target the enemy ships? They obviously can't be within 1 million km of the enemy, otherwise the enemy will simply blast them with energy mounts (or even counter missiles). A LAC that lights up active sensors will be targeted by the enemy at any distance, especially if it's helping the shipkillers. It may be too late for the first salvo, but any enemy survivors will have a lock on the LACs.

Since the pods are within the sidewalls, proximity-kill is not a worry; we skip the "rolling the pods" time; we launch when the MCLs and LDLs are in position. A SMALL amount of AI lets the first missiles take a more circuitous path to the target, later launches take a more direct path, and all the missiles arrive together. This is done today with artillery (Fire high-angle, then increasingly lower angles with a smaller powder charges); the Archer gun system with 1 barrel can put 6 rounds on the target simultaneously. We can do that with missiles.

I think that if this was doable in the Honorverse, it would have been done. It's not difficult at all to increase your range by taking a deeper parabolic course so that it takes an extra 20 seconds to reach the target, making a time-on-target attack possible. My guess is that this isn't done because of the issue of control links discussed up-thread: why you can control 5 salvos, but not one salvo 5x bigger. The theory there is that the salvo arriving demands dedicated resources, while all the trailing ones are only in "ping" mode or something.

That said, this strategy would allow for one ship to control its saturation salvo without missiles from its brethren, if loitering missiles is not possible. If loitering is pososible, there's no point in taking longer routes: just have all the missiles wait to activate their wedges until the maximum saturation is ready to go.

MCL/LDL teams can be scattered around the system (pre-positioned) for pirate interdiction. The MDM coast-phase can be days long, if we build them that way. MCL/LDL teams can lie doggo if they are close enough to the pirate, and can stealth-creep a-la Hancock Station. 1g acceleration will get you there. Maybe even this week.

You don't need any of that against pirates. Simple CL without LACs would be enough to beat most pirates. You don't need this ship of yours with the mass of a BC to fight pirates, as you could just use a BC, a pair of CAs or a quartet of CLs.

MDM coast phases don't need to be days long. At the end of the first stage, the missile is moving at 0.27c, so it will cross from one end of the hyperlimit to the other in 162 minutes.

It is possible that a LAC could be a relay point for data to the Mk 23E contol missles but at this point most of that would be- possibly- be relayed by Ghost Ridder recon drones but not typicaly come into play as the drones are mostly shoving data back to either their mother ship or handing off to other ships who can receive the take.
The LAC sending to the Mk23E controlers would become a target, the big question is would somebody- like the SLN- would target the LAC as a single point in space as a source node and what would they fire at it? A LAC could handle a couple of shipkillers but probably not 20. Would a hypercapable ship spend 10+ shipkillers on such a discovered node.
At this point, the SLN isn't, or shouldn't be the problem. That would be somebody like Mannerheim and the RF or one of the Alignment Spider Drive ships that was more or less hanging around. IF, big IF, the LAC involved just fed the data along and then attempted to clear the area of transmission in stealth mode, would it get far enough from where it transmitted (and probably changed vector to avoid a projection along it's previous flight path calculate for the duration of the transmission) to avoid any missiles sent to destroy it. We don't know. Part of that would be how far was the ship fireing at a projected area.