?

Theemile wrote:

Dauntless wrote:SLN didn't design and build the cataphract, the MAlign did and just gave them to the SLN to make them think they stood a chance in missile combat.

though I don't dissagree that the improvement in performance is big for the timeframe.

then again we have little idea exactly when the MAlign declared them ready. First time we saw them in combat was when the PNiE attacked Torch and does even the Malign give a disposable merc force the best version of their secret missile that is supposed to mitigate the Manties advantage in a missile fight.

Both that PNiE version and the Filareta version were pretty much then stock SLN missile guts mounted in the Cataphract. The Javelin, the new SLN missile, got an accel boost over the previous SLN model, explaining the V2 that Filareta fielded. Then 2 or 3 more versions were fielded in the last 1/2 of 1922, early 1923 that went from incremental increases to what would have been complete game changing upgrades in any other timeframe. I can see % changes - but 80% in 2-3 years? Whaaaaaat?

See what I mean? The RMN isn't the only entity smart enough to hold the full capabilities of their missiles in abeyance for a rainy day... of missiles.

"Rainy days and Mondays always gets, meee down."


I was forced to spend a triple-post-chip. Such rare suckers they are.

Theemile wrote:In addition, the Shrikes carry upgraded BC spinal Grasers - weapons designed to disembowel BCs and make modern DNs and SDs take note of what just smacked them. Only 1 or 2 hits with a weapon like that can mission kill a BC - several will plain old kill it. It takes dozens of hundreds missiles to kill a BC.

More like "dozens" instead of "hundreds" when it comes to SLN BCs (assuming "dozens of hundreds" was a typo). At Hypatia, each 360-missile wave was killing 5 BCs. That's 72 missiles per ship, an even 6 dozen. That's ships cleared for action, with wedges and sidewalls up, firing CMs and PDLCs and who had seen the missiles coming from 16 million km away. Against a ship with no sidewall or wedge, fired from point blank?

Jonathan_S wrote:BTW 130,000 gees is the accel of a Viper/Mk31 CM, we've never seen a Cataphract 2nd stage with that acceleration (though the latest versions might actually exceed it). The original Cataphracts 2nd stage could only do 98,000 gees - but the final ones seen in UH might have a 2nd stage with up to[1] a ludicrous acceleration of about 261,000 gees! That seems crazy, and we don't get a direct measurement of the 2nd stage acceleration; but its 1st stage could presumably do 171,400 gees at full power - given its observed accel for 3 minutes (implies 50% power); so maybe the CM could do about 260,000.

I'm going to ignore that acceleration for now, until either it repeats or gets confirmed by textev again. If RFC sweeps it under the rug or BuNine manages to retcon how they misread the values, we won't have lost any sweat.

Jonathan_S wrote:If their accel actually is that high they'd have a 30 second range of 1.1 million km. But even that means they're launching within CM range of their target (even pre-war CMs had 1.2 - 1.5 million km ranges). And their terminal velocity is low, only about .25c. So they're sitting ducks for defenses designed around stopping mass salvos of missiles moving at 0.8c. It's going to take them at least several seconds to cross PDLC range - which is an eternity.

I thought CM range was 200k km. Or is that PDLC range?

Jonathan_S wrote:And of course anybody with more mainstream missile performance (say Manticore) their capital missiles would be restricted to a far more pedestrian 92,000 gees, which means they can only cover 405,720 km in 30 seconds, which means, as you pointed out, they launch with 0 velocity well inside energy range (if outside of PDLC range) so the ship's main energy mounts should have no trouble picking off the glacially slow missiles. And even once they close to PDLC range it'll probably take them upwards of 6 seconds to cross it, at less than 0.1c. They'll be slaughtered.

If Harkness can use capital ship missiles as CMs with Barricade, I'm sure some adventurous CO can use the main energy mounts as point defence too.

cthia wrote:I don't have the book handy right now, but I am quite certain the Shrikes used missiles as well. I recall specifically "missile flight time is twenty seven seconds."

Note that those are Vipers and the LACs were REAAAALLY close. I don't know how long it takes for a ship to reconfigure from Warshawski sail back to wedge, but 15 seconds could be pushing it close. Not to mention the shot could be up the kilt, so no amount of wedge or sidewall is going to help. The LAC Vipers are up against the stern chase weapons of those BCs.

Without rereading, I recall I imagined they were firing on the unarmoured ventral or dorsal aspects of the ships, which are a much bigger target and much more fragile. But there's no requirement that ships come rotated the same way, only that their vector be the wormhole's exit vector. So ships could come sideways and the LAC would be seeing the broadside of the ship. On the other hand, firing up the kilt would mean firing through the wormhole. What happens to stuff going through the wormhole in the wrong vector, without sails?

The Shrikes were firing both energy weapons AND launching missiles. It is because of what I shared with tlb in another post about the Shrikes one Achilles heel. They have a limited energy budget because the fission reactor cannot recharge the plasma capacitors in the midst of battle. So they only have a limited number of shots from the energy weapons. They had no choice, unless I digested it all wrong. Quite possible since I was still pining from Jayne spurning my advances, yet again.

That's true, but if it takes a single shot to kill a BC and they had more than one LAC, they can do a relay. One takes up firing position while the other recharges. Note also that the ships were coming alone, since it's a WH transit. They were also spaced out from one another; without traffic control, they were likely at least two minutes from each other.

So, can you recharge the capacitors for the graser in 4 minutes?

You're right, they didn't have their wedges up and they weren't cleared for action. Against the Shrikes energy weapons under those circumstances, it was like clubbing kittens. But the fact remains, Manty stealth allowed them to get LACs less than thirty seconds missile flight time from the enemy. MAlign stealth is even better.

That's not comparable. They "didn't get to less than 30 seconds". They were there before the target ship appeared in system. The transiting ship could not detect the LACs because it was literally light-years away. By the time it did transit, the LACs could be making the biggest noise in the Universe and that wouldn't have saved the SLN ship.

If they steal the RMN reactor secret, that mine field of missile pods can become a minefield of missile pods and grasers like what Shannon came up with from salvaged Solly energy weapons. Ouch!

If you know a minefield is there, call Harkness. He'll send a Barricade down to clean it up. He may even use CMs this time instead of capital ship missiles. You know, those things with oversized wedges whose purpose is to hit stuff with the wedge? And don't let him read Starfire, or he'll start thinking on how to create AMBAMMs.

Actually, no, that won't work. If each CM has a 100 x 200 km wedge, a Nike fires 32 CMs every 8 seconds, then 5 Nikes can sweep a cross-section of 100 * 200 * 32 * 80/8 * 5 = 32 million km² in 80 seconds. That's a circle of less than 3200 km in radius. No minefield is that small. Maybe if the missiles decelerated and made 100 passes through the volume of the minefield, that would get us to 32000 km in radius, which is now closer to what a minefield around a planet might be.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I don't have the book handy right now, but I am quite certain the Shrikes used missiles as well. I recall specifically "missile flight time is twenty seven seconds."

Note that those are Vipers and the LACs were REAAAALLY close. I don't know how long it takes for a ship to reconfigure from Warshawski sail back to wedge, but 15 seconds could be pushing it close. Not to mention the shot could be up the kilt, so no amount of wedge or sidewall is going to help. The LAC Vipers are up against the stern chase weapons of those BCs.

Without rereading, I recall I imagined they were firing on the unarmoured ventral or dorsal aspects of the ships, which are a much bigger target and much more fragile. But there's no requirement that ships come rotated the same way, only that their vector be the wormhole's exit vector. So ships could come sideways and the LAC would be seeing the broadside of the ship. On the other hand, firing up the kilt would mean firing through the wormhole. What happens to stuff going through the wormhole in the wrong vector, without sails?

The Shrikes were firing both energy weapons AND launching missiles. It is because of what I shared with tlb in another post about the Shrikes one Achilles heel. They have a limited energy budget because the fission reactor cannot recharge the plasma capacitors in the midst of battle. So they only have a limited number of shots from the energy weapons. They had no choice, unless I digested it all wrong. Quite possible since I was still pining from Jayne spurning my advances, yet again.

That's true, but if it takes a single shot to kill a BC and they had more than one LAC, they can do a relay. One takes up firing position while the other recharges. Note also that the ships were coming alone, since it's a WH transit. They were also spaced out from one another; without traffic control, they were likely at least two minutes from each other.

So, can you recharge the capacitors for the graser in 4 minutes?

You're right, they didn't have their wedges up and they weren't cleared for action. Against the Shrikes energy weapons under those circumstances, it was like clubbing kittens. But the fact remains, Manty stealth allowed them to get LACs less than thirty seconds missile flight time from the enemy. MAlign stealth is even better.

That's not comparable. They "didn't get to less than 30 seconds". They were there before the target ship appeared in system. The transiting ship could not detect the LACs because it was literally light-years away. By the time it did transit, the LACs could be making the biggest noise in the Universe and that wouldn't have saved the SLN ship.

If they steal the RMN reactor secret, that mine field of missile pods can become a minefield of missile pods and grasers like what Shannon came up with from salvaged Solly energy weapons. Ouch!

If you know a minefield is there, call Harkness. He'll send a Barricade down to clean it up. He may even use CMs this time instead of capital ship missiles. You know, those things with oversized wedges whose purpose is to hit stuff with the wedge? And don't let him read Starfire, or he'll start thinking on how to create AMBAMMs.

Actually, no, that won't work. If each CM has a 100 x 200 km wedge, a Nike fires 32 CMs every 8 seconds, then 5 Nikes can sweep a cross-section of 100 * 200 * 32 * 80/8 * 5 = 32 million km² in 80 seconds. That's a circle of less than 3200 km in radius. No minefield is that small. Maybe if the missiles decelerated and made 100 passes through the volume of the minefield, that would get us to 32000 km in radius, which is now closer to what a minefield around a planet might be.

Answering a bunch of things.

At Ajay, the BCs were in the wormhole emergence zone, a tube of gravity where ships cannot use impellers for several minutes as they exit the wormhole. Energy weapons can fire into and out of the lane. Standoff laserheads can fire into an emergence lane, but no CMs or missiles can be launched by ships in the emergence lane, nor can their sidewalls be raised.

The Shrikes were stationed in a rough disk behind the emerging ships, with rotating groups firing on each emerging ship to concerve energy.

Shrikes also carry 20 DD/CL scale missiles in addition to any vipers in their CM launchers. However, The Grasers are >>> more effective than a DD warhead with 3, 3m lasing rods. ( Cruiser weight warheads carry 6, 5 m laserheads, mk16gs carry 6, 10m laserheads, and capital warheads carry 10, 10m warheads.)

The Manty junction HAD minefields in 1900. With the longer standoff range of laserheads now being able to fire into the emergence lane and MDMs being speedy enough to get to the emergence lanes, mines have been replaced by shoals of missile pods.

CM have a 10x10 to 15x15 km wedge, depending on the tech, just like missiles do. 100x200 km is a cruiser sized wedge.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:In addition, the Shrikes carry upgraded BC spinal Grasers - weapons designed to disembowel BCs and make modern DNs and SDs take note of what just smacked them. Only 1 or 2 hits with a weapon like that can mission kill a BC - several will plain old kill it. It takes dozens of hundreds missiles to kill a BC.

More like "dozens" instead of "hundreds" when it comes to SLN BCs (assuming "dozens of hundreds" was a typo). At Hypatia, each 360-missile wave was killing 5 BCs. That's 72 missiles per ship, an even 6 dozen. That's ships cleared for action, with wedges and sidewalls up, firing CMs and PDLCs and who had seen the missiles coming from 16 million km away. Against a ship with no sidewall or wedge, fired from point blank?

Jonathan_S wrote:BTW 130,000 gees is the accel of a Viper/Mk31 CM, we've never seen a Cataphract 2nd stage with that acceleration (though the latest versions might actually exceed it). The original Cataphracts 2nd stage could only do 98,000 gees - but the final ones seen in UH might have a 2nd stage with up to[1] a ludicrous acceleration of about 261,000 gees! That seems crazy, and we don't get a direct measurement of the 2nd stage acceleration; but its 1st stage could presumably do 171,400 gees at full power - given its observed accel for 3 minutes (implies 50% power); so maybe the CM could do about 260,000.

I'm going to ignore that acceleration for now, until either it repeats or gets confirmed by textev again. If RFC sweeps it under the rug or BuNine manages to retcon how they misread the values, we won't have lost any sweat.

Jonathan_S wrote:If their accel actually is that high they'd have a 30 second range of 1.1 million km. But even that means they're launching within CM range of their target (even pre-war CMs had 1.2 - 1.5 million km ranges). And their terminal velocity is low, only about .25c. So they're sitting ducks for defenses designed around stopping mass salvos of missiles moving at 0.8c. It's going to take them at least several seconds to cross PDLC range - which is an eternity.

I thought CM range was 200k km. Or is that PDLC range?

Jonathan_S wrote:And of course anybody with more mainstream missile performance (say Manticore) their capital missiles would be restricted to a far more pedestrian 92,000 gees, which means they can only cover 405,720 km in 30 seconds, which means, as you pointed out, they launch with 0 velocity well inside energy range (if outside of PDLC range) so the ship's main energy mounts should have no trouble picking off the glacially slow missiles. And even once they close to PDLC range it'll probably take them upwards of 6 seconds to cross it, at less than 0.1c. They'll be slaughtered.

If Harkness can use capital ship missiles as CMs with Barricade, I'm sure some adventurous CO can use the main energy mounts as point defence too.

Yes, I intended to say dozens or hundreds...depending on the tech and type of missiles ( DD/ lac missiles might be over 100 hits on a BC)

Classic CM range is about 1 million km, or just at the extreme end of energy range, mk 32s now hit ~3.7 million km. PDLC range is about 100-120,000 km.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
(SNIP!!!)

If Harkness can use capital ship missiles as CMs with Barricade, I'm sure some adventurous CO can use the main energy mounts as point defence too.

I remember a David Weber post stating that standard pre-war People's Navy anti-missile doctrine did use the main energy mounts (at least the lasers).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If Harkness can use capital ship missiles as CMs with Barricade, I'm sure some adventurous CO can use the main energy mounts as point defence too.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:I remember a David Weber post stating that standard pre-war People's Navy anti-missile doctrine did use the main energy mounts (at least the lasers).

Broadside energy weapons have always been part of an integrated missile defense. I remember a statement somewhere that grasers, unlike lasers, could fire partial energy shots (since full power is not needed for counter missile fire); which would increase its rate of fire in that mode.
From In Enemy Hands, chapter 5:

Alvarez carried less than half the energy weapons of a Star Knight, which substantially reduced the number of targets she could engage simultaneously. It also cost her a small but possibly significant percentage of her antimissile capability, since starships often used broadside energy batteries to back up their purpose-built point defense weapons during long-range missile duels. But by accepting that reduction in weapon numbers, the combined Grayson–Manticoran design team had been able to mount twenty percent more missile tubes and fit in graser projectors heavier than most battlecruisers mounted.

From War of Honor, chapter 58:

Space was a blinding, roiling cauldron of energy around Second Fleet as counter missiles, shipboard lasers and grasers, and LACs poured fire into the phalanx of destruction sweeping down upon it. At least sixty percent of the Allies' fire was defeated by ECM or picked off by active defenses.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I thought CM range was 200k km. Or is that PDLC range?

Expanding slightly on what others already said.

The prewar CMs carried by HMS Fearless at Basilisk could reach out to about 1.5 million km (60s @ 90,500g). But I think were usually fired for intercepts somewhat closer to give manouvering time. And, in the event, Honor actually has Scotty delay the CM salvo against Sirius's first launch.
"Not yet, Mr. Cardones," she said quietly. "Let the plot settle. Fire at a half-million kilometers to catch them as their drives go down."; because Sirius was opened fire somewhat beyond it's own powered missile range.

That max range crept up slightly during the war, and by the end of the ceasefire the newest CMs Honor took to Sidemore were up to almost 2.3 million km (60s @ 130,000g). Then those were rapidly superseded by the extended range Mk31 (also used as the basis of the Viper anti-LAC missile) which could reach further than CMs could accurately be targeted; 3.5 million km (75s @ 130,000g)

PDLCs, while I can't recall a precise range, are probably at least 200,000 km. (Though I used ~150,000 when calculating the times in my previous post; making sure I erred in favor of the close range missile ambush idea.)

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:I remember a David Weber post stating that standard pre-war People's Navy anti-missile doctrine did use the main energy mounts (at least the lasers).

As already noted that was a standard defensive measure; just rarely explicitly called out in battle descriptions in the books. I do remember him saying (or possibly its somewhere in the books) that the Peeps were a bit better at using their main mounts for anti-missile work than the RMN was.

Jonathan_S wrote:

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.

Though given the way spider drives are said to work you need size (or at least length) to get acceleration. Spider acceleration, as I understand it, is fairly dependent on the the number of ultra-powerful tractor-like spider projectors that can be mounted. So if you shrink it the already low acceleration is likely to decrease.

(Which means that if the crew could survive the acceleration, which they can't, a spider ship should be able to mount enough projectors to out accelerate the fairly sedate graser torp)

Still, microfusion would give the MAlign a nasty new toy to incorporate in their toolbox.

And given their current military mix (where their main warships seem to be ambush predators (striking unseen to survive) is probably more useful to them than FTL fire control (signals are detectable) or the MDM baffle (their missiles don't seem to be their primary weapon)

Going the other way knowledge of the Spider drive's details might let the GA become more effective at detecting it; but I can't seem them deploying any significant number of spider ships of their own. Possibly the biggest short term impact from a technology transfer would be the vastly higher accelerations of the latest Cataphract missile's drives. If they could put those into a evolution of the Mk23 it'd give their existing MDMs are significant performance boost.

Galactic Sapper wrote:Or some unholy combination of techs, such as grafting a spider drive to a pod full of missiles so that instead of being able to see a mass missile launch coming from light minutes away the damn things launch from inside CM range and give you almost no time to respond. Worse, the missiles carried on such pods could be a SD-level laser head with only a CM sized drive, since it doesn't need more range than that. Basically, imagine a pod full of Vipers that hit as hard as Mark 23s, that can launch from less than a million km out with no warning.

The Frankenstein'd spider-pod thing might take up as much space as two or three standard MDM pods - maybe even could only be carried externally or in a freighter - but it might be so devastating to be worthwhile.

It seems I literally tried to reverse engineer a collective idea. Or plagiarize. Okay, outright steal.* Something like this is exactly what I was proposing for a minefield! I'm putting the two of you on the first thing smoking to Bolthole. Stat!

I still think Foraker's brand spanking new wormhole defense platforms could become an interesting minefield variant.

Sorry for hacking your research gentlemen. It appears to have happened a few times across the board. I'll take that to mean there may be a few possibilities that could interest our author. I'm really beginning to wonder if he might find this thread useful.

*Tech is already exchanging hands in this thread.

Jonathan_S wrote:As already noted that was a standard defensive measure; just rarely explicitly called out in battle descriptions in the books. I do remember him saying (or possibly its somewhere in the books) that the Peeps were a bit better at using their main mounts for anti-missile work than the RMN was.

I think the Peeps did some optimizations to make them more effective. I forget the exact comment, but basically it was that the RMN didn’t see them as particularly useful on an anti-missile role, and the Peeps disagreed.