Loren Pechtel wrote:cthia wrote:But that dependence might be a result of not being able to reach viable ramming speeds. And those speeds, the god of the HV has decreed, apparently begins at ~ .9C.
You don't need that sort of velocity to ram--you just need a way past the wedge. The logic behind the laserhead made sense in the SDM era, but the MDM changed things--it is almost as survivable ramming as it is at maximum standoff. Sure, it's a sitting duck for the point defenses, but the point defenses will be reloading during that last .2 seconds.
You still need standoff to get around wedges and you might need to use some standoff to avoid fratricide if too many missiles make it through (but I think this unlikely, if they are even tens of microseconds apart there will be no fratricide), but the desired attack should always be ram.
Jonathan"S wrote:Well also a way through the sidewall. I don't know what, if any, velocity would let a missile pierce that. But we know that in HotQ a pair of 78-ton impacts at 0.25c on a BC's sidewall were harmless.
But I also thing you're overstating their resistance to point defense. Even if an MDM was traveling infinitely close to the speed of light it'd still take it 11.7 seconds to cover the 3.5 million km envelope of a Mk31 CM. Sure at that speed it'd take about 0.333s to cover the PDLC envelope. And yes, the current cycle rate on an point defense laser emitters is 16 seconds; but a Nike-class BC(L) carries 30*14=420 such emitters on each flank, allowing it to keeps up a steady 25 shots/second; meaning it could get off at least 7 shots at a MDM closing at lightspeed - so not all the emitters are going to be recharging during that 1/3rd of a second it takes for light to streak through the PDLC envelope. (And of course capital ships mount even more clusters)
But, more importantly to my mind, at even normal MDM terminal velocity the missile has no ability to turn a corners. And while there may be some velocity at which a missile can blow through a sidewall, there's no evidence the same would every be true of a wedge. So all the ship would need to do to be utterly invulnerable to missile ramming attacks; not matter how high velocity they were, was roll just far enough that the wedge is interposed between the missile and the hull.
At that point you're back to have to make a 'snap shot' with a laserhead because there's no ramming target left.
And trying to reach those speeds with a drone drive is going to be a long slow process; as even in flat out, non-stealthy, mode like we saw at Mobius they've got less than 1/2 the acceleration of the low accel setting of a missile. Try to keep the accel low enough that you can hide the acceleration from just distant grav sensors and it's a quarter of that (or about 11% of the missile's low accel). So for a semi-stealthy accel you're looking at an hour and 21 minutes, covering over half a billion km (~32 lightminutes) to get to just the 0.8c an MDM can hit in 9 minutes. And at that velocity the bow shock is going to be really noticeable when it flies by your distant FTL-comm equipped picket. So even with a stealthy drive it's not sneaking up on a first line target at that velocity. (And against a 2nd or 3rd rate opponent you don't need to do anything fancy, your laserheads will rip them apart anyway)
cthia wrote:Come on guys! We have got to get on the same page here. The wedge will be screwed. The sidewalls will be screwed. If either of them is hit by a missile traveling at C, it will be screwed. Let's assume C so we will get a better idea of the worst of what we face. I agree with Loren here, about considering a missile traveling faster than a mere .9C. Anyway, a missile traveling at C has infinite mass. Why don't we just call it what it is.
This is an infinite mass projectile
Now I don't know what the MilSpec rating says about wedges and sidewalls. But they are about to get tested. And they will be found lacking.
It reminds me of the episode of Knight Rider when Kitt meets Goliath. What was it? ...
-> What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?
Ans. The imposter will be revealed.
P.S. I hope all of you are right that these things would be short lived, because you wouldn't want them to ever become flying Dutchman or broken arrows.
And... once the wedge or sidewalls fall, and they will fall, I will assume that the entirety of everything on the inside of the wedge (including the ship) is in total "vacuum"). The kinetic energy will totally consume the vacuum. Consider what an explosion from inside of an object will do to that object. The precise location of the ship inside the wedge won't matter.
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