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cthia wrote:

Lacs were never meant to close with SDs

Lenny Dets were never meant to close with Planets

Lenny's are not ship to ship weapons. Warships are only part of their bigger picture. A Lenny wants to achieve a zero/zero intercept with targets. Preferrably planets, For all intents and purposes, "We have managed to bring a warship into your garage. We control the orbitals, because when we open fire, it's not going to matter if you know where the missiles are coming from. It'll be too late to do a damn thing about it.

Galactic Sapper's notion clues you in as to why.

Galactic Sapper wrote:Alliance micro fusion generators would make grazer torpedoes much worse and potentially allow them to be scaled down as well as given much more range. The possibility of grazer torps the size of MDMs should be terrifying.

Remontoire provides the mechanism . . .

Remontoire wrote:What about a grazer impeller hybrid of the two types though? Seems to me the spider drive grazer torps used in oysterbay wearn't designed to be practical ship to ship main combat weapons, they were surprise attack stealth weapons.

Absolutely. In fact, if the Lennys can get as close as I imagine to a target, game over. I think the Lennys can achieve an invisible zero/zero intercept with the planet.

If a Lenny's Debt can get that close to targets, they could use impeller drives to launch graser torps at much higher than normal accelerations due to unprecedented proximity. There is no more need to loaf trying to coast unobtrusively into a system. They will be smuggled into systems, within the cargo holds of Trojans.

At any rate, don't fool yourself. When this thing lights off, well, Merry Christmas. At that point, the MA won't care if an opponent can see where the missiles are coming from. "We'll even leave the light on for ya, so you can look death in the eye."

'Tis my dish served cold.

We've managed to sneak a Trojan horse into your garage. Instead of soldiers pouring out, pods of impeller-powered graser torps unleash their fire and brimstone.

HELL HATH TRULY COME TO DINNER

&

IT HATH NO FURY THAN A DETWEILER SCORNED

Let's think on this a bit. A Graser Torp is a modded Lt. Cruiser Graser, with an old fashioned LAC Fusion Reactor, a spider drive, stealth and an AI from he!!. It masses in the range of an old fashioned LAC and moves at ~250Gs iirc.

The Cruiser Graser weighs over 1000 tons, so without EXACT numbers, let's say we can shoehorn the modded graser, the microfusion reactor, the spider, and the AI and Stealth system into a 1.25 Kton package, considerably down from the 4000-6000 Kton package it currently has - we are still discussing something 10x the size of a prewar capital missile (120-130 tons). Nice, but still not a missile. Plus you don't want a missile drive - it speeds up then dies, giving a high speed smash into the target. The Graser Torp needs to LOITER - to get the best effect of it's 3 second burst. Which means a low speed attack. So at best, it could be a large RD with an RD drive.

Theemile wrote:Let's think on this a bit. A Graser Torp is a modded Lt. Cruiser Graser, with an old fashioned LAC Fusion Reactor, a spider drive, stealth and an AI from he!!. It masses in the range of an old fashioned LAC and moves at ~250Gs iirc.

The Cruiser Graser weighs over 1000 tons, so without EXACT numbers, let's say we can shoehorn the modded graser, the microfusion reactor, the spider, and the AI and Stealth system into a 1.25 Kton package, considerably down from the 4000-6000 Kton package it currently has - we are still discussing something 10x the size of a prewar capital missile (120-130 tons). Nice, but still not a missile. Plus you don't want a missile drive - it speeds up then dies, giving a high speed smash into the target. The Graser Torp needs to LOITER - to get the best effect of it's 3 second burst. Which means a low speed attack. So at best, it could be a large RD with an RD drive.

Let's think on this a bit. Manticore already has recon drones that can sit within spitting range of warships who know they are there without being able to be detected. MAlign stealth tech is assumed to be as good if not slightly better than Manticoran stealth tech. What part of a grazer torpedo with a recon drone impeller drive instead of a spider isn't absolutely freaking terrifying?

They'd have higher acceleration with equivalent stealth, extremely long loiter time, and the ability to maneuver themselves in order to get the best possible firing angle on the target even if the target knows they are coming. It's Mistletoe with a much scarier weapon aboard.

As for launching the things, the MAlign could use a mostly conventional LAC carrier type ship coupled with a Ghost class recon ship. Hyper in, launch 200+ of the damn things, release the Ghost from where it was tractored to their hull, and hyper out as fast as their generator can cycle. A system with a detector array is going to know they were there, but what realistically can they do about it?

And the 200+ number is using something like a Havenite Aviary-class carrier with the roughly LAC sized torpedo. If they could engineer it down to even 2k tons, it might be more like launching 2000 of the things from broadside bays all at once rather than the relative dribble out of a pod bay.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Theemile wrote:Let's think on this a bit. A Graser Torp is a modded Lt. Cruiser Graser, with an old fashioned LAC Fusion Reactor, a spider drive, stealth and an AI from he!!. It masses in the range of an old fashioned LAC and moves at ~250Gs iirc.

The Cruiser Graser weighs over 1000 tons, so without EXACT numbers, let's say we can shoehorn the modded graser, the microfusion reactor, the spider, and the AI and Stealth system into a 1.25 Kton package, considerably down from the 4000-6000 Kton package it currently has - we are still discussing something 10x the size of a prewar capital missile (120-130 tons). Nice, but still not a missile. Plus you don't want a missile drive - it speeds up then dies, giving a high speed smash into the target. The Graser Torp needs to LOITER - to get the best effect of it's 3 second burst. Which means a low speed attack. So at best, it could be a large RD with an RD drive.

Let's think on this a bit. Manticore already has recon drones that can sit within spitting range of warships who know they are there without being able to be detected. MAlign stealth tech is assumed to be as good if not slightly better than Manticoran stealth tech. What part of a grazer torpedo with a recon drone impeller drive instead of a spider isn't absolutely freaking terrifying?

They'd have higher acceleration with equivalent stealth, extremely long loiter time, and the ability to maneuver themselves in order to get the best possible firing angle on the target even if the target knows they are coming. It's Mistletoe with a much scarier weapon aboard.

As for launching the things, the MAlign could use a mostly conventional LAC carrier type ship coupled with a Ghost class recon ship. Hyper in, launch 200+ of the damn things, release the Ghost from where it was tractored to their hull, and hyper out as fast as their generator can cycle. A system with a detector array is going to know they were there, but what realistically can they do about it?

And the 200+ number is using something like a Havenite Aviary-class carrier with the roughly LAC sized torpedo. If they could engineer it down to even 2k tons, it might be more like launching 2000 of the things from broadside bays all at once rather than the relative dribble out of a pod bay.

The biggest difference between a RD based Gtorp and a Spider based Gtorp is endurance. In SoS, we see that a high speed RD has a node life of about 2-3 days - depending on the flight profile, that might be a week with periods of inactivity, where the Graser Torp has a active drive endurance of about 2 months.

If the tech were available, I can see BOTH versions being useful. The RD version being more tactical, and the Spider version being more strategic.

Theemile wrote:The biggest difference between a RD based Gtorp and a Spider based Gtorp is endurance. In SoS, we see that a high speed RD has a node life of about 2-3 days - depending on the flight profile, that might be a week with periods of inactivity, where the Graser Torp has a active drive endurance of about 2 months.

If the tech were available, I can see BOTH versions being useful. The RD version being more tactical, and the Spider version being more strategic.

nitpick: Graser torps don't have drive endurance of 2 months. They were sent in ballistic at Manticore & Grayson and didn't bring their drives up until they received that last data transmission so they were less than a day out from Hephaestus, Weyland, Vulcan and presumably Blackbird (no direct evidence on BB Yard but they used the same operation planning & prep).


It was the Silver Bullets that had 2-3 months of spider drive loitering in Beowulf and then strategically zapped Mycroft platforms. But they weren't armed with graser torpedo heads due to size constraints.

They were already larger than the Detweilers were really happy with, due to to squeezing in the spider drive itself (a mass pig), solar panels & trickle charger, and two powerpacks from the Wraith Mesan RDs. And all that was barely enough to be squeezed into double-sized shipping containers stacked end-to-end simply so they could smuggle the Bullets into Beowulf.

Not a lot of that tech looks like it could benefit very much from Manticoran miniaturization techniques. Bits of the graser, maybe a little on the Wraith powerpacks since Wraith themselves are 70% larger than a GR drone; there's gonna be some room to reduce their size but not much since it's mostly the spider drive. And we don't really have any educated clue as to how much even Manticore could reduce a spider drive tonnage, since it's seemingly based (in part) on tractor beams which is not something anybody has pushed research on enhancing.

Somtaaw wrote:nitpick: Graser torps don't have drive endurance of 2 months. They were sent in ballistic at Manticore & Grayson and didn't bring their drives up until they received that last data transmission so they were less than a day out from Hephaestus, Weyland, Vulcan and presumably Blackbird (no direct evidence on BB Yard but they used the same operation planning & prep).


It was the Silver Bullets that had 2-3 months of spider drive loitering in Beowulf and then strategically zapped Mycroft platforms. But they weren't armed with graser torpedo heads due to size constraints.

They were already larger than the Detweilers were really happy with, due to to squeezing in the spider drive itself (a mass pig), solar panels & trickle charger, and two powerpacks from the Wraith Mesan RDs. And all that was barely enough to be squeezed into double-sized shipping containers stacked end-to-end simply so they could smuggle the Bullets into Beowulf.

Not a lot of that tech looks like it could benefit very much from Manticoran miniaturization techniques. Bits of the graser, maybe a little on the Wraith powerpacks since Wraith themselves are 70% larger than a GR drone; there's gonna be some room to reduce their size but not much since it's mostly the spider drive. And we don't really have any educated clue as to how much even Manticore could reduce a spider drive tonnage, since it's seemingly based (in part) on tractor beams which is not something anybody has pushed research on enhancing.

Chain nitpick: the Silver Bullets didn't have months worth of drive endurance either. Most of the time they were present they were simply sitting as a hole in space with their drives totally inactive. Ghost Rider drones can do the same, as seen with the drones left behind in New Tuscany in SftS.

cthia wrote:

Lacs were never meant to close with SDs

Lenny Dets were never meant to close with Planets

Lenny's are not ship to ship weapons. Warships are only part of their bigger picture. A Lenny wants to achieve a zero/zero intercept with targets. Preferrably planets, For all intents and purposes, "We have managed to bring a warship into your garage. We control the orbitals, because when we open fire, it's not going to matter if you know where the missiles are coming from. It'll be too late to do a damn thing about it.

1) I don't think they can actually orbit without being picked up by old fashioned radar.

2) I don't believe this counts as controlling the orbitals. At that point it's contested space, not controlled space. Firing on the planet at that point is an Eridani violation.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
1) I don't think they can actually orbit without being picked up by old fashioned radar.

2) I don't believe this counts as controlling the orbitals. At that point it's contested space, not controlled space. Firing on the planet at that point is an Eridani violation.

No, they are magically transparent to everything.

And if you have a 30MT ship in orbit, everything military that was in orbit is clouds of debris.

I was unsure about the size of Graser Torps. Jayne is still refusing my advances. But I was under the impression the Spider Drive itself accounted for the lions's share of it's mass. If they no longer need the stealth because they are being launched from such close distances; well, I thought they'd become considerably smaller without the spider drive.

However, even if they cannot be made significantly smaller, hasn't textev already told us they were designed to be launched from Lennys? We're talking about a warship that can spit these things out like watermelon seeds.

Even if the size of Torps severely limit their loadout, I happen to notice the total number of main weapons in a modern sub's magazines is only 24 Trident Missiles. As devastating as Tridents and Graser Torps are, I don't think they need many to accomplish an objective. I'm reasonably certain a Lenny can carry a lot more than what'll be needed. How many did the dirty in Oyster Bay?

If a Lenny achieves an invisible zero/zero intercept, that means it hasn't been detected and everything is sitting pretty - fat, dumb, and blind as bats. Everything in orbit will be Bynged.

Theemile wrote:The Graser Torp needs to LOITER - to get the best effect of it's 3 second burst. Which means a low speed attack. So at best, it could be a large RD with an RD drive.

It'll loiter all the way in-system aboard Lennys.

Seriously, if launched from such a close range, its speed will be low. Just too fast for completely oblivious targets to react.

Also, that 3 second firing time is enough to "key an entire vehicle" -- drag a key down the entire length of a target?

At any rate, the overarching concept here is the Lennys will natively launch Graser Torps. From mocking distances.

If Sharks are . . . SHARKS

then

LENNY DETS are KILLER WHALES

—Confucius

Galactic Sapper wrote:Let's think on this a bit. Manticore already has recon drones that can sit within spitting range of warships who know they are there without being able to be detected. MAlign stealth tech is assumed to be as good if not slightly better than Manticoran stealth tech. What part of a grazer torpedo with a recon drone impeller drive instead of a spider isn't absolutely freaking terrifying?

They'd have higher acceleration with equivalent stealth, extremely long loiter time, and the ability to maneuver themselves in order to get the best possible firing angle on the target even if the target knows they are coming. It's Mistletoe with a much scarier weapon aboard.

There's no evidence that the MAlign has access to Ghost Rider tech. They may have better hull and active stealth while using a spider drive, but do they know how to make a wedge capable of pulling 3500 G undetectable at a light second?

And I disagree that a target that knows they're coming wouldn't pick them up. RMN sensors are pretty good too and did pick up any RDs the SLN threw close at them. The only question is range: can the GT fire from a million km out, which is probably outside detection range unless an RD is at spitting distance? Or does it have to close to within a light-second?

cthia wrote:If a Lenny achieves an invisible zero/zero intercept, that means it hasn't been detected and everything is sitting pretty - fat, dumb, and blind as bats. Everything in orbit will be Bynged.

I dispute in vehement terms an "invisible zero/zero intercept". There's absolutely no way you'd fail to notice a 12 to 30 million tonne hulk sitting 1 km off your port bow. If you meant that a hyperbole for "zero/1 million km", then I can agree. Anything less than 1 million km increases the chances of detection considerably, with 1 light-second probably being the highest risk the Lenny would accept.

And a single OWP can probably ruin a Lenny's day. It doesn't have a wedge and sidewalls, so being in orbit with no warships does not imply uncontested orbits. It has to take out all OWPs, if there are any. What I don't know is if there are, since OWPs are probably pretty useless against current warships.

It also has to worry about system defence pods that may be somewhere within 5 million km of the planet.

It'll loiter all the way in-system aboard Lennys.

Seriously, if launched from such a close range, its speed will be low. Just too fast for completely oblivious targets to react.

Please see my calculations up-thread. At 150,000 gravities and 1 light-second, fired from rest relative to target, it's still going to take 20 seconds from launch to target. That's more than sufficient for PDLCs to fire. The launch platform would probably be at rest, because otherwise it would be following the missile into the range of CMs.

Also, that 3 second firing time is enough to "key an entire vehicle" -- drag a key down the entire length of a target?

Of course. At the range they fire from, a tiny nudge represents a very long arc on the target.