1. Without a control link, even a single missile is blind fired. But Manticoran launches are actually broods of eight missiles. Is that still eight control links, or one control link per brood of missiles?
2. Does a missile have to have a control link assigned to it before launch, or can it be blind fired then a control link assigned to it as one becomes available? Passing the baton and targeting info, another luxury afforded by FTL control. GR.
3. When the Admiral's ships are destroyed and the remaining launches are on their own, are they completely on their own, or can GR drones update them with the ship's last targeting info? Cached inside GR.
I'll never understand why a ship has to die with any missiles in its holds. Especially when there are other ships, like Megan's, in the system. Flush all missiles and let Megan handle them.
4. Do the control links have to be shared with CMs as well?
5. Approximately twenty launches at, let's say five hundred missiles per launch, for a total of 10,000 missiles? Is that 10,000 currently active control links for the missiles that are already in flight, alone? Or does the computer consider when control links will be available and staggers the launch accordingly?
::Sir Shrugsalot::
Three hundred and thirty attack missiles, covered and protected by their electronic siblings, streaked towards their targets, separating onto individual, evasive approach profiles at last, and TF 1030’s missile defenses tried frantically to reacquire them as they came.
“Projected targets Ontario, Enterprise, Edinorg, Marengo, and Re Umberto,” Koopman said flatly. “Tracking’s confidence is not—repeat, not—high.”
Hajdu’s jaw tightened. If those projections were correct—and, looking at the hashed nightmare of the plot he understood exactly why Tracking’s confidence in them was so low the Manties had concentrated their fire on only five of his ninety-eight battlecruisers. That would produce a density of almost seventy missiles per target, assuming an even distribution, and that promised disastrous consequences. Seventy Solarian missiles would have been enough to wreck any battlecruiser, assuming they could get through its defenses. Looking at that plot, it was obvious a lot of them were going to get through, and one thing all OpAn’s projections agreed upon was that Manticoran warheads were far more destructive on a bird-for-bird basis.
He’s not even trying to target all of us, the vice admiral realized. He’s going to go for a handful of targets in each salvo, concentrate his fire to pound through their defenses, and rip them to frigging bits.
Hajdu Gyôzô’s brain went through the remorseless math. There were fifteen salvos in space now. His Cataphracts were actually faster than the missiles coming at him—their time-of-flight was seventy-one seconds shorter than the initial Manticoran salvo’s—but by the time they reached their target, the Manties would have fired a total of nineteen. If each of those salvos concentrated on five of his ships and even a third of them got through, they could reduce every single one of his battlecruisers to wreckage.