SOS - Control Links and Salvos

jchilds wrote:

Echoes of Honor, Ch. 3 wrote:"These are another innovation—for now we're calling them 'Beta-Squared' nodes—which are much more powerful than older nodes. In addition, they've been fitted with a new version of our FTL com—one with a much higher pulse repetition rate—which should make the Shrikes very useful as manned long-range scouts. I imagine we'll be seeing something like it in larger ships in the not too distant future. What matters for our present purposes, however, is that the new nodes are very nearly as powerful as old-style alpha nodes, and we've also built much heavier sidewall generators into the Shrike to go with them. The result is a sidewall which is about five times as tough as anything ever previously mounted in a LAC.

House of Steel states Beta-squared nodes became standard on all Manticoran construction by 1921 PD, as stated in the Shrike-class entry.

cthia wrote:Oh yeah, I seem to recall that now. LACs doubled as pre Apollo recon drones. Which seems to suggest the FTL tech had to go thru several iterations of miniaturization before ready for Apollo. I simply couldn't recall when bandwidth had increased, and the slow rate of Morse Code communicating the kinds of detailed conversations at long range implied by text should have been painfully slow. Thanks jchilds.

The SL has a lot of hurdles to jump. I wonder how many kids they'll mistakenly shrink before they get there. "Honey, I shrunk the kids."

cthia wrote:Brigade XO, I missed the fact that Megan had deployed GR to send a message to the cavalry. That brings me to a question which always confused me because I didn't get another memo. When did the GR drones begin to be able to communicate so much info in storyline? I recall initially that RMN FTL had a much limited bandwidth. In what book did they gain a larger vocabulary? I knew the vocabulary had grown beyond a Kindergarten's vocabulary, I just missed when. I experienced a, 'When did they get access to Webster's entire dictionary' type of feeling.

Theemile, thanks for breaking down Megan's loadout and number of available launches. Thanks also for explaining how she got away with keeping her position concealed, because I also missed that she swam her missiles out ballistically. But isn't the same method normally used for tube fired launches? With the only difference being the delay in lighting off? At any rate, I wondered how she would remain hidden had she needed to keep rinsing and repeating. Your post gives me ideas. She could have swam several launches out with the first launch. Activating each as needed. With several more launches ready to go from a new location. Damn she's sneaky. Did she take one of Honor's classes? "How to Stick it to the Man 101"

Theemile wrote:Normally, missiles turn on their wedge almost immediately after they clear their mothership's wedge. Old school, small ships could stack broadsides by spining, firing the first broadside with a few seconds of ballistic cruising programmed in before they fire off their drive, then firing the 2nd broadside when that face aligns with the target, and timing the wedges so both salvos arrive as one. You could add this pause in wedge activation to any launch, but rarely was there an advantage. Ships rarely had the fire control to control more than 2-300% of their broadside, and missiles launched quickly fall behind a moving ship, making them more difficult to control.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:Normally, missiles turn on their wedge almost immediately after they clear their mothership's wedge. Old school, small ships could stack broadsides by spining, firing the first broadside with a few seconds of ballistic cruising programmed in before they fire off their drive, then firing the 2nd broadside when that face aligns with the target, and timing the wedges so both salvos arrive as one. You could add this pause in wedge activation to any launch, but rarely was there an advantage. Ships rarely had the fire control to control more than 2-300% of their broadside, and missiles launched quickly fall behind a moving ship, making them more difficult to control.

And they did that because they could spin at high enough RPM to get the other broadside's missiles off in less time that it would take for the original broadside to reload and fire again.

So a spinning double-broadside provided a higher rate of fire and required less delay before activating the wedges of the first group of missiles.

Though I think for the best control of the missile you'd have to kill your spin within 90 seconds or so of igniting the first salvo. Otherwise your own spin prevents the ship from maintaining a solid sensor lock and fire control link on the target.


Larger ship didn't bother trying the spinning double-broadside because they didn't spin as quickly - and I think would take longer to build up or cancel out spin. If they wanted a double-broadside they'd simply accept the longer delays and lower firing rated needed to pump 2 launched from the same broadside before missile drive activation.

Dauntless wrote:old style LACs had one shot missile boxes.

As far as I know there is no reason a modern LAC couldn't fire missiles with delayed activation.

Dauntless wrote:old style LACs had one shot missile boxes.

As far as I know there is no reason a modern LAC couldn't fire missiles with delayed activation.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Dauntless wrote:old style LACs had one shot missile boxes.

As far as I know there is no reason a modern LAC couldn't fire missiles with delayed activation.

Though at some point you exceed the number of missiles it can simultaneously control. And LACs probably have less excess fire control (for redundancy or pods) than larger hyper-capable warships.

So even though you could in theory delay launch a Ferret's entire magazine in one go it probably can't control most of those missiles if it does that.

And as it was pointed out that RMN/GSN LACs fire forwards, so the LAC wouldn't be able to accelerate while stacking all these missiles; otherwise it would quickly run into the coasting missiles ahead of it. (The missile launch tubes don't impart all that much velocity)

But if you're willing to coast while stacking missiles I don't see any reason a LAC wouldn't be able to stack multiple salvos for a simultaneous delayed activation. (They'd just be restricted to how many salvos they could actually control; with any in excess of that being little more than very expensive and not very effective blind-fired decoys)