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Joat42 wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:And you don't need compensators at all. Without one your acceleration would be quite low by starship standards, no more than 50 gees (unless you've got the MAlign's super gra plates, in which case 150 gees). But if you keep to that low acceleration you should even be able to sail grav waves without a compensator. (You lose the acceleration advantage of doing so, but sails would still give you free energy)

Don't you need nodes to project the sails? Which implies you also can project a wedge, which means you probably also have installed a compensator anyway - because why not?

The point is that a warship with such a low acceleration can't survive very long in a battle. A spider-ship is only effective when it's not detected, but as soon as it's located it'll soon be just debris drifting through space - which is why I find it preposterous that they would design a warship without a wedge and a compensator which certainly will be needed during active operations.

If we go with the second use, the whole fleet train would be extremely slow due to the LD's poor acceleration plus the LD's would be relegated to the role of shoot and scoot - somewhat like mobile artillery supporting traditional units.

I may be wrong, but that only means that rfc has cooked up some extraordinary handwavium to make the spider-ships work in a practical way that's sustainable - as it stands right now they are essentially just one-trick ponies.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But could the MAlign have something like Star Trek's warp cradles (think of Spock arriving in Star Trek: The Motion Picture)? Detach the node rings for in-system operation so as to lower your mass and make the spider drive more efficient.

This has horrible combat results, though. It means getting back to the spot where you dropped them, which could be a couple of light-months away. It also means you have a destination to get to. So maybe the mass penalty is a necessary evil.

In addition to these purely technical considerations, I would think that the RMN would reject a "sleeve" approach because of the tactical dangers it would represent. Bear in mind that I have not read all the posts on this topic, so someone may have come up with a clever suggestion I don't know about, but the greatest weakness of the entire system would seem to me to be that having come out of hyper and undocked from one's sleeves, one has to leave those sleeves somewhere. If, in fact, the enemy doesn't know when you arrived, or where you went, or where you dropped them off, they should at least still be where you left them when you need them. If the enemy does have the least notion where you came out of hyper and he has any mobile forces in the area, they will simply lie there like a hole in space until your Shrikes are way far in-system, then amble over and, with leisurely, unopposed precision fire, reduce your sleeves to drifting wreckage, thus effectively marooning your LACs in the system in question. Even if they only have forces out beyond the hyper limit, they can be told--even with light-speed communications--where to look for your sleeves if you were spotted by a sensor platform in passing or any of several other things which could give away your general arrival locus. At that point, Mr. Peep pops into hyper, comes out right at the hyper limit behind your LACs (which are now too far away to intervene) goes active with his radar, locates the sleeves, and wipes them from the face of the universe. Any Admiralty is going to have very serious qualms about any system this vulnerable to destruction even if it decides that the enemy will find them only by a fluke. Flukes, after all, happen in warfare, and if this one occurs, the consequences will be the total loss of your scouting force. Your LACs might try coming in from extreme distance to minimize the chance that their hyper footprints will be detected. This would allow them to undock from their sleeves at any point along their approach course they wish. But they could still be detected incoming, and the enemy could still use units out-system of them to move in along the hyper limit and wait for them. All the interceptors would have to do would be to reach a point on the periphery of the hyper limit at which the LACs will cross, then camp there and wait for the LACs to enter engagement range. Admittedly, they could also do this to a hyper-capable DD, but the difference is that if the DD spotted them (and I, for one, would be using lots of recon drones to watch for lurking cruisers), the DD could alter course short of interception, cross the hyper limit elsewhere, and be off and away into hyper space immediately without having to figure out how to reach the waiting sleeves (now quite possibly on the far side of a hostile force which is hyper-capable and therefore able to attempt micro-jumps to intercept LACs someone else entirely may be tracking for them).

Even if the initial location of your sleeves is not known to the enemy, your LACs will have to withdraw to rendezvous with them before they can leave for home. That means they have to backtrack the way they came. An astute enemy CO will realize this and do his damnedest to track/intercept your LACs on the way back. He may have only a 10% or 15% chance of pulling this off, but if he pulls it off at all, at least some of his units are very likely to beat you to the sleeves (assuming that you have come in past his outermost units to scout and are now forced to decelerate back towards them). If they do, they wipe them out, and you're stuck. Even if he doesn't manage to do that, he'll be given a chance to intercept and engage your guys as they pass by. A ship with its own, integral hyper capability, OTH, doesn't have to backtrack. It can blow on out of the inner system on whatever vector looks best to it, and it can hyper out the instant it crosses the hyper limit (assuming its velocity is no greater than .3 cee at the time), with no need to rendezvous, dock, bring the alpha nodes on line from a cold start. etc.

Rather than adopt some complicated, tactically dangerous two-part system for a Shrike, the RMN is far more likely to go for a new-build DD which may be smaller than current DDs, thus bringing platform costs down even closer to the cumulative cost of a "sleeved" Shrike, and give it some "Shrike-like" characteristics. With the new missiles, for example, they may (may, I say!) decide to delete the conventional chase armament, move the missile tubes around to the broadside, and put a really powerful spinal mount in place of both the chase tubes and the present chase energy weapons. They may very well also add a bow wall, which would permit the DD to pull a Shrike-style "strafing attack" on larger, heavier ships. They may be able to incoporate Beta2 nodes into the design, to free up more internal space for other nasty tricks, and I'm sure they would include upgraded EW capabilities. But they will also give it integral hyper capability, and they will continue to visualize it as a generalist and not a specialist.

tlb wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Don't you need nodes to project the sails? Which implies you also can project a wedge, which means you probably also have installed a compensator anyway - because why not?

The point is that a warship with such a low acceleration can't survive very long in a battle. A spider-ship is only effective when it's not detected, but as soon as it's located it'll soon be just debris drifting through space - which is why I find it preposterous that they would design a warship without a wedge and a compensator which certainly will be needed during active operations.

You are confusing things; there are two separate types of nodes: the Beta nodes are used to project the wedge (and sidewalls?), while the Alpha nodes project the sails for use in hyperspace. To have the two sails to take best advantage of hyperspace you need two Alpha rigs, one at the bow and the other at the stern. Unlike the Beta nodes, they do not impose any other shape requirement on the hull.

You are totally correct about the disadvantages imposed by the lack of Beta nodes; the Malign has designed a ship whose only advantage is stealth; which is why it is being compared to a WW2 submarine.

Joat42 wrote:AFAIK, the main difference between alpha- and beta-nodes is that alpha nodes can project either sails or wedges.

The impeller rings of any military starship mount a total of 24 nodes: 8 alpha nodes and 16 beta nodes. The alpha nodes are mounted at 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, and 315 degrees. The beta nodes are mounted every 15 degrees between the alpha nodes. In terms of size, an alpha node is about three times as large and massive as a beta node; in terms of the generator support required, the difference is more like six times as great, but a beta node provides about half as much power to a standard impeller wedge as an alpha node does. Thus each alpha node provides about 6.25% of a wedge's full power and each beta node provides about 3.13%, so that the alphas and betas as groups each provide 50% of the whole. (Actually, those values are halved for the full power of the wedge, since both impeller rings combine in a full-strength wedge.) The 8 alpha nodes, however, suck up as much mass as 48 beta nodes would, which is the reason beta nodes are used. It is the alpha nodes which contain the Warshawski sail components, though, and a ship cannot generate a Warshawski sail without at least 8 of them. It is possible to run a node at greater than 100% of rated capacity under emergency conditions in order to get back some of the power lost when other nodes are knocked out by combat damage, but this is a risky procedure and not one to be undertaken lightly. Freighters may sometimes carry fewer beta nodes, or even none at all. It is extremely uncommon for a ship to mount no beta nodes, but it is not unheard of, either, since cargo carriers seldom carry the inertial compensators to permit them to make full use of a "full powered" wedge, anyway.

Obviously, the big difference(s) between LACs and hyper-capable ships is that the former do not have Warshawski sails (or alpha nodes) and hyper generators. Omitting these two items allows a tremendous savings in internal volume which can then be used for other things, like additional weapons. In addition, the usual LAC has a crew of no more than 16-25 men and women and vastly lower life support requirements than even a destroyer with a company of 300-350, much less a ship like Nike with a company of over 2,100.

tlb wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Don't you need nodes to project the sails? Which implies you also can project a wedge, which means you probably also have installed a compensator anyway - because why not?

You are confusing things; there are two separate types of nodes: the Beta nodes are used to project the wedge (and sidewalls?), while the Alpha nodes project the sails for use in hyperspace. To have the two sails to take best advantage of hyperspace you need two Alpha rigs, one at the bow and the other at the stern. Unlike the Beta nodes, they do not impose any other shape requirement on the hull.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Mass penalty. Presumably, the number of nodes is proportional to the size of the ship, so installing nodes on the ship means it's dedicating some mass and volume to the nodes.

Galactic Sapper wrote:For "reasons" I assume to be entirely plot related, ships are not built with redundant alpha nodes to prevent a single unlucky hit from destroying the ability to make a sail. You need all 8 alpha nodes of both rings to safely form sails; sailing with one sail not survivable. Perhaps it's the mass penalty, since you'd need 16 alpha nodes per ring to be sure to form a symmetric sail with the loss of a single alpha node and alpha nodes are substantially larger than beta nodes (3 times, I think? Not sure there). The nodes are spaced symmetrically around the hull in repeating Alpha Beta Beta, Alpha Beta Beta, repeat, pattern.

Galactic Sapper wrote:For "reasons" I assume to be entirely plot related, ships are not built with redundant alpha nodes to prevent a single unlucky hit from destroying the ability to make a sail. You need all 8 alpha nodes of both rings to safely form sails; sailing with one sail not survivable. Perhaps it's the mass penalty, since you'd need 16 alpha nodes per ring to be sure to form a symmetric sail with the loss of a single alpha node and alpha nodes are substantially larger than beta nodes (3 times, I think? Not sure there). The nodes are spaced symmetrically around the hull in repeating Alpha Beta Beta, Alpha Beta Beta, repeat, pattern.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:For "reasons" I assume to be entirely plot related, ships are not built with redundant alpha nodes to prevent a single unlucky hit from destroying the ability to make a sail. You need all 8 alpha nodes of both rings to safely form sails; sailing with one sail not survivable. Perhaps it's the mass penalty, since you'd need 16 alpha nodes per ring to be sure to form a symmetric sail with the loss of a single alpha node and alpha nodes are substantially larger than beta nodes (3 times, I think? Not sure there). The nodes are spaced symmetrically around the hull in repeating Alpha Beta Beta, Alpha Beta Beta, repeat, pattern.

They probably carry a couple of spares in the cargo hold, so the ship can effect repairs. The problem under combat situations is the time it takes to do that, which probably includes a sustained period of powering down the entire ring. At best, you could keep the other ring on, but that would still leave you at half acceleration.

Making a secondary 8-node ring sounds nice, but if you lose one in each ring, you're still screwed.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:For "reasons" I assume to be entirely plot related, ships are not built with redundant alpha nodes to prevent a single unlucky hit from destroying the ability to make a sail. You need all 8 alpha nodes of both rings to safely form sails; sailing with one sail not survivable. Perhaps it's the mass penalty, since you'd need 16 alpha nodes per ring to be sure to form a symmetric sail with the loss of a single alpha node and alpha nodes are substantially larger than beta nodes (3 times, I think? Not sure there). The nodes are spaced symmetrically around the hull in repeating Alpha Beta Beta, Alpha Beta Beta, repeat, pattern.

Disagree--it's not just for plot reasons. The spares would be powered down and we have seen that powered down nodes in the vicinity of an active drive get at a minimum knocked out of tune. However, there might be a reason to revisit this--whatever technology allows an MDM to survive might be able to protect spare nodes, also.

However, I don't think you need it anyway. What about a ring of 24 alpha nodes? You can lose any two and still have a symmetric ring of 8 (albeit at the cost of frying the others) if you have to jump with damage.

Galactic Sapper wrote:Further, we've seen a few times where beta nodes are taken out of a ring to reduce the power of the wedge in order to more effectively mimic a merchant ship wedge. Shipboard nodes do not seem to have the same interference problem that missile nodes do, or at least not to the same extent. Either the further spacing between them matters or maybe the beta nodes are partially powered in a "neutral" setting that keeps them in tune with the ring without adding any power? AFAIK we've never seen anything definitive on that.