Escort Carrier Modification

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The Warshawskis have a detection range of 8 light-minutes. So an engagement at 0.2c would give you 40 minutes of warning that there's a grav wave. The LACs would not even get caught unawares and would never cross into the wave. Note that for geometry, this means the furthest point they can catch up with their foe is far short of the wave, since they have to reduce speed and avoid entering the wave in the first place. They must either stop relative to it or reduce speed such that their CLAC can catch up with them and they can be brought in before they ballistically go into the wave. And you can't dock to a ship that is overtaking you at 30,000 km/s relative.

All engagements must also be at low speed relative to the particle background. In hyperspace, exceeding 0.6c is dangerous (I doubt destruction is immediate; most likely it's stochastic and increases exponentially as speed increases). It's possible one could have LACs with specially fitted particle screens so they can survive higher speeds, but unless such a thing is much easier in smaller ships than in bigger ones, it's highly unlikely it is possible at all. Remember that the majority of the time in shipping is spent at cruising speed at the highest band the ship can reach, so if it were possible to cheaply increase that by 16% from 0.6 to 0.7, they would have.

I'm not saying that capital ships couldn't engage at close to cruising speed. It's possible, but highly unlikely, for several reasons. First, there's little range for overtake velocity: even if the opponent is slightly slower, they have enough time to climb to relative rest to their attackers. Second, this applies to missiles too: even though they may get to 0.8c, the 0.2c overtake is paltry and would mean a long ballistic flight. Third, even if you succeed in disabling a ship at cruising speeds or close to it, mounting SAR will be impossible because Newton's First Law still applies. Fourth and most importantly, the pursuers have the advantage, since their missiles have the full 0.6c they can decelerate from and attack their pursuers.

No, what I meant is that LAC engagements won´t happen at cruise speeds because they will be even more limited than missiles from the paragraph above. And unlike shooting back, one wouldn't launch for attack LACs at cruising speed, because then you can't recover them. Those would be suicide missions (using them to thicken missile defensive is another story). So what this means is that if LACs are in play, the speed of all combatants is low enough that they will have enough time of warning of where rogue grav waves are.

One other detail is that even if luring LACs into a grav wave were a tactic, it would be dangerous one. The ship in question must transition from wedge to sails. However quick that is, it may not be quick enough to avoid missiles that are time-on-target to arrive at the exact moment they're supposed to transition!

Theemile wrote:

Very interesting point on the differences in the various combat environments.

<simplifying>

For all intents and purposes, in Hyper, by far your highest chances of being be intercepted are during your accel/deccel phase at the ends of a journey, not the majority of the journey in the cruise phase. During the cruise phase, there is a small chance of running into another ship traveling at shallow angles to your course, and any oncoming ships would be a high speed pass with little time to attack (so good for commerce raiding, bad for piracy).

LACs would only be able to keep pace with a cruising formation, not accelerate away from, during the cruise phase; any that fall behind, will not be able to catch up until the deccel phase of the journey. LACs would only be able to maneuver around the formation IFF the formation is moving sub-max cruise velocity. (which, in turn, makes interception more likely.)

Relax wrote:THREE: Assuming the above 2 are true, are LAC's better at defending convoy's on a $$$ basis during peace? I'll let you get back to your argument, just thought I would clean up the crew possibility that no one is talking about.

Jonathan_S wrote:And speaking of escape pods -- In a lot of ways (despite being far larger) LACs would actually be easier to deal with than escape pods.

An escape pod is a compromise of a conventional warship's capabilities.
* Their launch tubes are more opening in its armor, and take up hull space that could otherwise carry sensors or weapons;

* Their need to be accessible from deep in the ship (engineering, bridge, CIC, etc.) means large escape pod pathways opening addition voids in the ship and taking up extra volume.

So escape pods are necessary, but there's a trade-off. For a given size/tonnage more pods, in more places, with more launch tubes will increase the ability of the crew to successfully abandon ship; but that extra ability comes at the expensive of weak spots in its armor, smaller/fewer sensors, and less weapons and point defense mounts. So designers need to balance escape pods against combat capability.

But with a CLAC the LACs are its main armament; and so the correspondingly command priority for its broadside space; and they mount no broadside offensive weapons; only point defense. The LACs don't need to be brought deeper into the hull than necessary to close the bay hatch behind them.
The bay doors are weak points in whatever armor might be applied to the CLAC's broadside; but a CLAC isn't supposed to be engaging in slugging match. At least the core armor around engineering, the bridge, CIC, etc. would be inboard of the LAC bays and thus wouldn't be pierced for LAC access like it is for escape pod tubes.


LACs are far larger, and their bays take up far more broadside space than any plausible number of escape pod tubes. But as they are the ships main weapons making space for the isn't a trade-off of its combat capability; it's the creation of that capability.