LAC on LAC warfare

But it is acceleration that must be "compensated", not velocity;

Apology, pardon my French, brain drain, drive-by, fast brain slow typing, editing snafu's, etc.

Whatever; it is not a different mechanism, because the drive is working exactly the same as it does when accelerating, the only difference is the direction that the ship is facing. There is no need for different size tractor beams on the spider drive ship, just as there are not different wedges used to decelerate rather than accelerate.

Process? Whatever. Flipping the ship is a process. BTW, how much time does it take to flip? Does it vary for each class of ship?

As an aside, it bugs me that a ship with a wedge has to flip to slow down; because that was not true of square rigged ships which could back sails ("Old Ironsides" did this in the midst of a battle to get an advantage).

I hate that it has to flip too, but with no force to push against . . .

OTOH, I was rather looking forward to seeing it in the movie.

tlb wrote:As an aside, it bugs me that a ship with a wedge has to flip to slow down; because that was not true of square rigged ships which could back sails ("Old Ironsides" did this in the midst of a battle to get an advantage).

cthia wrote:I hate that it has to flip too, but with no force to push against . . .

OTOH, I was rather looking forward to seeing it in the movie.

We are told that the wedges slant, so that one opening (the front?) is wider than the other. But how does the wedge know which is which? There has to be something in the powering of the nodes that causes this. So reversing would just be a matter of reversing the slant. The only problem that I can imagine is that the compensator has a preferred direction.

If it did not work because the was nothing to push against, then the wedge would not work at all; because what is there to push when going forward? Fortunately it must push the alpha wall, or something like that.

Duckk wrote:An old style LAC spends something like 25% of its mass (IIRC) on just its fusion plant. That puts a massive squeeze on the available tonnage for other equipment. A new style LAC with a fission plant has a lot more mass and volume to play with by comparison. That lets them build in a lot more defensive features, like more capable and more numerous point defense and EW. Then you have advances like the beta squared nodes which improve sidewall strength by a factor of 5 over previous LACs (and also save additional mass), and the bow/sternwalls which reduce the vulnerable arcs. In the early engagements against Shrikes and Ferrets, it was noted how much more resistant they were to broadside energy mounts. They can still be swarmed by enough old style LACs, but the loss ratio will be entirely in the new LACs’ favor.

Been meaning to circle back around to this. If the MA break the fission barrier and choose not to utilize the extra mass but to eliminate it in favor of an even smaller, faster target, 25 % smaller, could it be worth the effort? Even with less space on the hull for toys. It would be like the more maneuverable Mig, deployed in favorable odds.

Also, getting back to LAC tactics. If another LAC is on your six, can you flip quickly and engage? With the same result as the loop performed by an F-14?

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:As an aside, it bugs me that a ship with a wedge has to flip to slow down; because that was not true of square rigged ships which could back sails ("Old Ironsides" did this in the midst of a battle to get an advantage).

cthia wrote:I hate that it has to flip too, but with no force to push against . . .

OTOH, I was rather looking forward to seeing it in the movie.

We are told that the wedges slant, so that one opening (the front?) is wider than the other. But how does the wedge know which is which? There has to be something in the powering of the nodes that causes this. So reversing would just be a matter of reversing the slant. The only problem that I can imagine is that the compensator has a preferred direction.

If it did not work because the was nothing to push against, then the wedge would not work at all; because what is there to push when going forward? Fortunately it must push the alpha wall, or something like that.

I hinted at something like that myself a hand of hands ago, but applied to the maneuverability of missiles. My mind keeps seeing a rudder. LOL

"Scotty, you've gone through a time warp, the ships don't work the same anymore. We now have transwarp drive." LOL

tlb wrote:We are told that the wedges slant, so that one opening (the front?) is wider than the other. But how does the wedge know which is which? There has to be something in the powering of the nodes that causes this. So reversing would just be a matter of reversing the slant. The only problem that I can imagine is that the compensator has a preferred direction.

If it did not work because the was nothing to push against, then the wedge would not work at all; because what is there to push when going forward? Fortunately it must push the alpha wall, or something like that.

Your theory that the compensators are on a specific direction is a good one. I have another: nodes weren't axially symmetric, but instead had preferred "fore" and "aft" sides. There must be something that locks the ring configuration into producing something that is not a cylinder in the first place. Otherwise, it would be possible to rotate the wedge around the ship's longitudinal axis.

Maybe it's possible but no one does that because it would stupidly expose your unarmoured dorsal and ventral surfaces.

cthia wrote:Been meaning to circle back around to this. If the MA break the fission barrier and choose not to utilize the extra mass but to eliminate it in favor of an even smaller, faster target, 25 % smaller, could it be worth the effort? Even with less space on the hull for toys. It would be like the more maneuverable Mig, deployed in favorable odds.

Also, getting back to LAC tactics. If another LAC is on your six, can you flip quickly and engage? With the same result as the loop performed by an F-14?

A more manoeuvrable LAC but with smaller missiles magazines, fewer CM launchers and PD clusters, and less effective ECM in exchange for 100 G of acceleration doesn't seem like a good trade-off to me. Maybe it can outrun any ship except an RMN fast courier, but it can't outrun a missile from 1550 PD, Travis' time. There are things you have to do to ensure survivability before you tack on acceleration and usually that means a minimum of defence against your expected enemy. Or, if you don't particularly care about your crews, offensive capabilities.

As for flipping, the only reason to do that would be to bear the humongous BC-grade graser on it. That's total overkill, unless it's the only weapon you have at the range. Trying to hit another LAC at over 800,000 km might not be possible, so I don't think a LAC would use the graser on another. Far more likely to use the Viper missiles, which can apparently be launched into any direction from any aspect, so the LAC wouldn't need to flip.

But if it had to or wanted to flip, I'm sure it could. It's probably got the shortest flipping time of any warship. So I can see this tactic being used to fire that graser, just not against another LAC.

munroburton wrote:It'd take the better part of a hour to somersault a superdreadnought.

https://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/e ... ton/128/1/

A typical SKM DD can alter her heading (but not necessarily her vector, of course) by 90 degrees in about 100 seconds; an SD would need about twelve minutes for a 90-degree turn. (The difference in roll rates is not as a great, although it also favors the smaller ship by a largish margin.

That's... surprising. Rolling, yawing or banking a ship is a matter of thrusters against the moment of inertia. Since a ship is roughly axially symmetric to a first degree approximation, one direction of rotation is very different from the others, of course. I can believe a 90° change of direction could take tens of seconds to accomplish, but 12 minutes is pushing credibility. I mention this because thrusters were powerful enough to push Honor's ships in the Cerberus System to 100 gravities.

Though there's this right after the part you quoted, inside the same parenthesis set:

In addition, of course, a smaller ship, with a lower beam and a narrower wedge, can roll "further" in a given length of time with the same roll rate than a larger ship can.)

(emphasis mine)

Honor's ships had no wedge at that time. Rolling a ship-and-wedge system may be far more difficult, especially since the vectors are applied far short of maximum leverage.

How long does it take an SD to bring up its wedge after shutting it down? It might be faster to do that, turn, and bring up, than take 12 minutes to do so.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Been meaning to circle back around to this. If the MA break the fission barrier and choose not to utilize the extra mass but to eliminate it in favor of an even smaller, faster target, 25 % smaller, could it be worth the effort? Even with less space on the hull for toys. It would be like the more maneuverable Mig, deployed in favorable odds.

Also, getting back to LAC tactics. If another LAC is on your six, can you flip quickly and engage? With the same result as the loop performed by an F-14?

A more manoeuvrable LAC but with smaller missiles magazines, fewer CM launchers and PD clusters, and less effective ECM in exchange for 100 G of acceleration doesn't seem like a good trade-off to me. Maybe it can outrun any ship except an RMN fast courier, but it can't outrun a missile from 1550 PD, Travis' time. There are things you have to do to ensure survivability before you tack on acceleration and usually that means a minimum of defence against your expected enemy. Or, if you don't particularly care about your crews, offensive capabilities.

As for flipping, the only reason to do that would be to bear the humongous BC-grade graser on it. That's total overkill, unless it's the only weapon you have at the range. Trying to hit another LAC at over 800,000 km might not be possible, so I don't think a LAC would use the graser on another. Far more likely to use the Viper missiles, which can apparently be launched into any direction from any aspect, so the LAC wouldn't need to flip.

But if it had to or wanted to flip, I'm sure it could. It's probably got the shortest flipping time of any warship. So I can see this tactic being used to fire that graser, just not against another LAC.

Tradeoffs. Tradeoffs. LOL

Drats, can't pick off another LAC. Although it seems targeting should be computer controlled in the short distances contained in dogfights.

Firing its graser into a capital ship is what I was thinking long ago in storyline when a LAC's enormous velocity carried it through a formation very quickly. I always wondered why they wouldn't perform the Pavel Maneuver and get a graser shot off. Can't miss a damn ship of the wall. Like you say, flipping should be painless for a LAC.

cthia wrote:I always wondered why they wouldn't perform the Pavel Maneuver and get a graser shot off.

Do you mean Parthian shot? Or is there a "Pavel Maneuver" (which I thought was just "run away")?

tlb wrote:Do you mean Parthian shot? Or is there a "Pavel Maneuver" (which I thought was just "run away")?

Oh, good, I'm not the only one who's missing the context. I thought it was something you'd come up with in the forum before I joined or some reference to other sci-fi I missed.

It's definitely not a Picard Manoeuvre.