Do we actually need SD(P)s?

cthia wrote:Was SD(P)s possible before the current level of automation?

As far as I can tell.

Prior to the development of the laserhead (in the mid-late 1800s) the legality of missiles was lower. But still, massive volleys of burners mixed with boomers would have overloaded the limited point defenses. So even with SDMs prior to laserheads they were viable to do significant damage as the fleet closed to energy range.

Te Honorverse seems to be inhabited by a lot of people with no imagination.

cthia wrote:Was SD(P)s possible before the current level of automation?

kzt wrote:As far as I can tell.

Prior to the development of the laserhead (in the mid-late 1800s) the legality of missiles was lower. But still, massive volleys of burners mixed with boomers would have overloaded the limited point defenses. So even with SDMs prior to laserheads they were viable to do significant damage as the fleet closed to energy range.

The Honorverse seems to be inhabited by a lot of people with no imagination.

Have you included the effect of the new pod technology? In the period you are writing about, pods did not have the mass drivers that could give missiles the same boost as the ship fired missiles received; so pod fired missiles were substantially slower.

Looks as though you have an auto-correct error that changed "lethality" to "legality" (my editor is flagging it as wrong also).

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:Was SD(P)s possible before the current level of automation?

As far as I can tell.

Prior to the development of the laserhead (in the mid-late 1800s) the legality of missiles was lower. But still, massive volleys of burners mixed with boomers would have overloaded the limited point defenses. So even with SDMs prior to laserheads they were viable to do significant damage as the fleet closed to energy range.

Te Honorverse seems to be inhabited by a lot of people with no imagination.

The in-Book issue was the Grav drivers - namely you couldn't build one cheaply to make pods affordable. and Grav driver are necessary to sync salvos with shipborn launchers for consistent salvos - also to give them that much more final velocity and spread before they kick off their drives.

On the other hand - who cares. We've already determined that the initial kick doesn't add THAT much velocity over all in the scales we are discussing - 50K Gs launch tubes which give 1 sec of accel are pitiful when compared to 43K Gs for 180s.

If all you are doing is launching pods with no shipborn component, who cares what the interval is between missile launch and wedge firing - older e-mag or chem launchers in the pods will work - you just need to get controlled missile dispersion. Dumping 100s of missile pods which use springs to launch missiles will achieve roughly the same effect, and overload that period's defenses. Individually, their lower speed might make them easier to intercept, but collectively their sheer number would make it so no defense could stop them.

The real problem here is no one had fought large scale, pitched battles for over 300 years. Every concept was either academic or based off of (at best) BC squadron level action. Technology slowly change, but base assumptions stayed the same. In short, like any peace-time military in history - economics ruled the day. Millions of ideas probably died in those 300+ years on the alter of cost expediency. The missile pod, previously a standard piece of millitary hardware died - because of the high cost of missiles in peacetime and the introduction of shipborn emag and grav based launchers made the older pod versions (and the previous doctrine for their use) untenable in peace-time budgets. Over time, their use fades to the collective memory as "they just don't work", so no one even examines why, because it is just a fact "everyone knows".

Of course it would take a massive war and it's cold war run up, where dozens of iterations of hardware are built, beaten up, then replaced, for new concepts to be tried, because the economic environment allowed for "something new" to to be attempted to change the calculus.

I was assuming that automation increases available space, if it shares the same benefits as in today's world. Robots take up much less space than humans, and need much less supporting space than humans, like environmental systems. And they can work in confined spaces. I thought those gains in available space and the dramatic reduction in crew size made room to "hollow out" ships to make room for pods. What led me down that rabbit hole is wondering what hoops the SL would have to jump through to achieve similar designs.

cthia wrote:Was SD(P)s possible before the current level of automation?

It should have been. After all missile magazines were fully automated in normal operation than that's actually more complicated that powering up and dropping pods out the rear of the ship. The new automation being added to RMN ships was less things like moving missiles and pods around and more things like remote damage control robots and increased remote monitoring and control.
And automation probably doesn't increase usable space within the ship all that much in most ship classes; because even though you may not need room for local operators to sit you still need room to get repair and maintenance teams in to work on the equipment. You can't delete the access ways or shrink them much. (Now with a LAC you can cheat since they're relatively low endurance and practically unarmored so you can make much of their equipment primarily serviced externally; while in their dock - but that doesn't work on an SD sized ship). So even without additional automation room could be make for a pod bay if anybody realized it was worth the trade-offs.

As pointed out you pretty much need laserheads to make an SD(P) work; since an SD(P) of burn/boom nukes probably isn't that useful. It's hard to get too many of those simultaneously on target due to their very short standoff range and wide wedges. So you've probably only got a few decades between the deployment of the laser head makes an SD(P) semi-practical until Manticore rolls out the full up MDM equipped Medusa-class that were to carve their way though anything Haven could put in their path.

Theemile wrote:The in-Book issue was the Grav drivers - namely you couldn't build one cheaply to make pods affordable. and Grav driver are necessary to sync salvos with shipborn launchers for consistent salvos - also to give them that much more final velocity and spread before they kick off their drives.

On the other hand - who cares. We've already determined that the initial kick doesn't add THAT much velocity over all in the scales we are discussing - 50K Gs launch tubes which give 1 sec of accel are pitiful when compared to 43K Gs for 180s.

If all you are doing is launching pods with no shipborn component, who cares what the interval is between missile launch and wedge firing - older e-mag or chem launchers in the pods will work - you just need to get controlled missile dispersion. Dumping 100s of missile pods which use springs to launch missiles will achieve roughly the same effect, and overload that period's defenses. Individually, their lower speed might make them easier to intercept, but collectively their sheer number would make it so no defense could stop them.

I'd also considered that. And while I agree that you no longer have a need to synchronize with a shipboard launch I still see two issues with having weak grav drivers in your pods.

The lesser issue is that by imparting a somewhat slower initial velocity than a ship's missile tube your missiles are going to be slightly shorter ranged than your opponents - because that initial velocity doesn't just add to terminal velocity it adds to powered range. Still the difference might complicate things but it should be enough to keep you from stacking a few salvos and getting them off before enemy fire can make the 3 minute trip across to you.

The possible larger issue is that have a low initial missile velocity means it'll take longer for the missiles to diverge far enough apart for the pod's 10 or so missiles to activate their drives. After you're under steady fire that might result in more missiles to be caught by EMP before their drives activate - seriously reducing the throw weight of your SD(P).


Still I suspect that it would have been quite possible to build a practical SDM based SD(P) starting around 1890 PD - had anyone thought to do so. But as it happened it took almost twenty more years before before anybody committed idea to drafting boards.

It just seems implausible that the SL can come up with an SD(P) with their stupendous crew size without some level of automation. This thread is questioning the need for SD(P)s. If the SL or any future enemy start rolling 'em off the assembly line with comparable tech, then the GA can't fight SD(P)s with SDs, or whatever design is adopted in lieu of the SD(P). Gotta fight fire with fire.

Talking about the SLN, we have to consider the difference in ship sizes as well don't we? Along with automation, ship sizes had blossomed, which also should have contributed to the space available for the design.

IOW, some SL Admiral may not have lived to find out that those bigassed Battle Cruisers were pregnant with pods.

cthia wrote:It just seems implausible that the SL can come up with an SD(P) with their stupendous crew size without some level of automation. This thread is questioning the need for SD(P)s. If the SL or any future enemy start rolling 'em off the assembly line with comparable tech, then the GA can't fight SD(P)s with SDs, or whatever design is adopted in lieu of the SD(P). Gotta fight fire with fire.

The RHN didn't reduce their crew sizes by much, if at all, when they built their SD(P)s.

Hey, that's right munroburton. Then what made it possible? I'm not doubting you tech heads, you guys are amazing. I'm just wondering what made it possible to eliminate lots of used space to hollow out an SD to make an SD(P). My warped brain is telling me that if so much space was available for the design without a need to reduce the current footprint of the hardware, then lots of space was being wasted. And an Admiral could have had two or three swimming pools and crews could have been taken out of sardine cans.

But I seem to recall the pods themselves created lots of space? You can always stack more of an item if you use "boxes." Plus, ISTR, there is a serious tradeoff in the design because it eliminates a lot of the elements that make a ship more battle hardened, essentially turning them into eggshells. (I'm assuming the eggshell factor is part of the reason the design is being questioned.) Perhaps a lot of it also has to do with the design itself, which I'm sure makes better use of the available space. There's an art to packing. You darn veterans can pack a house in a suit case. LOL

I thought automation had a lot to do with it. At any rate, thanks for the info everybody. I suppose the SL won't have trouble with their own designs after all.

It's a literary construct. So it just has to make narrative sense.

But the idea was they reduced some engineering redundancy, ripped out the huge missile magazines and the dozens of big launchers, greatly trimmed the energy armament and somehow managed to fit all the stuff in.

It makes narrative sense.

More than does the US Navy's use of titanium to make fire mains out of.

cthia wrote:Was SD(P)s possible before the current level of automation?

Yes. The Sovereign of Space class of RHN SD(P)s have nowhere the automation that Medusas and Invictus have.