penny wrote:Anyway, at first glance a wall in the HV does not seem to comply with any traditional notions of a wall. Until one realizes that any densely packed highly organized structure can represent a wall. Textev supports that notion and what I take away from it is that even in the HV the idea of a wall can change. I recall Honor stating that she was going to organize her ships such that any given ship can have at least one shot at I can't recall the details but whatever the target was at the time; which implies that ordinarily every ship in a formation does not have a shot at the target since Honor was trying to guarantee at least one. And I got the impression that Honor’s wall of battle was not the norm, because it doesn't make sense that other walls of battle do not already guarantee one shot from each ship. Unless it is either impossible to do so and/or there are other concerns at play.
Indeed. "Wall of battle" may be a fossilised term, from an earlier era where the only possible formation was a wall. Or even had never been a wall; it's just the term that Navy, pundits and population came up with when fighting in 3D became possible, comparing to a "line of battle" and "ships of the line" for the wet navy.
But I think it does make sense to form a wall: see Jonathan's reply above for a formation that matches pretty much what I'd expect from a wall of battle, at least prior to and during the initial stages of the First War. That would include the events in
Toll of Honor.
My explanation as to why brings us back to the geometry. The larger the formation of ships the more difficult it would be for each ship to get a clear shot. Large formations are like large gatherings of people at Thanksgiving dinner. It is impossible to sit everyone at the table at once. Which brings us to …
That's why the wet navy formed a line: so that each ship's broadside had a line of sight to the enemy. Likewise, if you have each ship in the wall turn nose-to-tail to each other and stacked several levels, then their broadsides are all facing the enemy formation as well as the oncoming missiles.
This also provides one of the reasons why CMs aren't used much closer: because you want the wallers to turn wedge-on to the oncoming missile salvos, or at least some high angle like 60°. If they do that, their CMs won't be heading towards the shipkillers, but up or down relative. The other two reasons I expect CMs aren't used closer are that a) you want to hit the missiles as far as possible, so you're limited to the cycle time of your CM launchers; and b) you want to have an uncluttered view of the missiles so you can penetrate their EW and decoys. Cluttering that even further with your own CMs' wedges would make your job more difficult, not easier.
True. But that is also the reason why the CM defense is not only the most important defense but the most effective. CMs engage so far out compared to point defense that every CM launched by the fleet has time to concentrate its forces before engaging the onslaught of missiles. And their targeting does not have to be spot on because of the nature of the conflict. The huge wedges of the CMs are not going to miss the huge wedges of the incoming missiles. And the CMs have time to settle on the correct angle of attack.
Just a few clarifications: the effectiveness is lower at longer distances from the motherships, for <reasons>. Like the shipkiller missiles, the CMs sensors could not mistake their target wedges for anything else: David compared that to finding a million-candela spotlight in a dark room. But for plot reasons, they do. So effectiveness decreases with interception range.
Plus, the fact that the CMs could see the shipkillers does not mean they can hit them. The shipkillers are jinking to prevent that very thing.
So I agree that CMs are highly effective. The more that you take out of the shipkillers, the fewer you have to deal with using PDLCs and wedge interposition. But we are told that the actual interception ratio is rather small.
The CMs of the Shrikes are probably the most effective asset of the screens. I'm sure the RMN would have loved to have a lot more of them. I always questioned how effective LACs and their PDLCs were.
It's one more laser or graser mount. Even if each one of those has only a 1% chance of hitting anything, in a 1000-missile salvo that's one fewer missile. In a 10,000-missile salvo, something that the RMN and RHN were throwing at each other during the second war, that's 10 fewer.
BTW, that huge missile count is something that Filareta addressed and said was preposterously high. He didn't believe fleets could fling that many at each other, at least not with the number of wallers that were reported to be at each engagement. He believed that the accounts were in error.
More like spitting on a fire. As far as engaging with PDLCs, I certainly agree the LAC screen wouldn't be bunched up, because in case of a miss, friendly fire can take out a consort. Anyway, LAC formations are something else that bugs me. It would seem that LACs would be grouped close enough together that their anti-missile launches would arrive as a massed attack, similarly to ship CM launches. As I stated above, LACs should be susceptible to friendly fire when PDLCs are used.
Again the battle net and the reason why you must have clear lines of fire: so that friendly fire occurrences are minimised. That might also speak for having a 2D formation instead of hemispherical: then the only forbidden directions are perpendicular to the missiles' paths. Any screening element would be allowed to fire on its full arc forwards on oncoming missiles, and backwards on those that passed the formation (so long as they don't fire on the very wallers they're protecting).
In a hemispherical formation, the backwards angle will include other escorts. Plus, the ships on the North side of the hemisphere would also have an obstructed line of sight to the missiles flying below the formation even before they cross the formation. On the other hand, they'd have clear North-facing angles to any missiles that dodged up, with far more mounts than the few ships that formed the top of the wall.
Thinksmarkedly wrote:But they're also not so far apart that they can't help each other. There's a sweet spot that the RMN must have learned by trial and fiery error how close the defenders must be to help each other but far enough not to step on each others' toes. We did hear in the Battle of Spindle against Crandall that the SLN formation was keeping separations that no Peep Admiral would have accepted, much less the RMN.
I remember that quote. But wasn't that referring to ship formations and not LAC formations? The SLN didn't have any LACs, no?
Correct. I was at this point referring to the wall formation itself, but the same principle applies to the screen: there's a sweet spot learned through trial and error.
But back to the wall of battle. Don't tease me. Share with me how you imagine a wall of battle.
See Jonathan's reply.
It is interesting that you mention a hemisphere. I was close. I imagine a complete circle. I can't decide if that circle would be oriented like a wheel rolling down the street or coming at you like a frisbee.
I hadn't thought of the shape of the 2D wall, but this does make a lot of sense. A face-on circle is still a "wall." That is, a wall does not have to be rectangular.
A wheel rolling down the street, seen from someone down the street, is has a rectangular profile. But I don't think this one makes sense because you'd have ships behind that first profile and I think that reduces the effectiveness by blocking some lines of fire. A think sheet of paper, rectangular or circular or oval, makes more sense to me.
Circular also allows the sidewalls to complement each other, leaving very small firing angles up the kilt or down the throat of the ships forming the outer rim. However, since the wedges themselves are square-ish in profile, that would leave larger gaps between ships of different layers for missiles to fly through.
In a rectangular wall, the ships at the two sides would have to pitch up or down in addition to rolling. That would leave the four edges with kilt and throat exposed.
But it seems intuitive that a circle or half circle is the most efficient defensive organization of ships. But the PDLCs of some of those ships are going to be blocked by the ships in front of it. But then when the order to “get those ships in closer” goes out. How is that accomplished in a half circle without wedge fratricide? Close the circle off? And if a hemisphere or half circle is the wall of battle, then how is it possible to collide with another ship when your ship is damaged? In a hemisphere or half circle the entire inside/outside of the formation should be clear for a ship that veers off because of damage. But obviously it is not.
The reason I thought for the
escorts to form a hemisphere is to protect the wall's thin sides, not just the front. For the wall itself, I don't think any shape but a flat-on wall makes sense. The wall minimises the time the missiles have during which to see the ship with no wedge in-between them.
I am going to respectfully disagree with you both. Even if compenation is different between ships and missiles, I’d wager the difference is in favor of missiles. Consider the insane acceleration capable of a missile itself compared to a ship. But more importantly, consider the shocking acceleration capable of a GR drone. IINM, a GR drone is much smaller than a missile.
No, drones are bigger than missiles.
Granted, it is only capable of, what, a fifth of a missile’s accel? Yet, that acceleration is shocking when you factor in that a drone operates for hours and a missile shoots its wad in mere minutes! It seems as if a drone could be set for sports mode instead of luxury mode which would disable the stealth and optimum gas mileage. It would also defeat cutting out the number of cylinders from 12 to 6. Since I think the drone utilizers a different type of impeller node. |:-)
They must, because those impellers don't burn out after a few minutes, can change acceleration, and can be restarted. I'd venture that a drone's impellers and compensators are more like a ship's or a pinnace's than a missile's.
Perhaps a missile needs to have just a bit of cognitive ability to know when to hold and know when to fold. I'd think that if a missile reaches attack range, rolling the ship is a foregone conclusion. Admittedly, and I appreciate David for referring to it in Toll of Honor, a ship rolls far faster than I thought. And I asked the question about the rolling rate long ago. Even though all of McKeon’s ships didn't complete the roll in Toll, I think it is stated that even the SDs complete a 180° roll in 2 minutes. 45 seconds for smaller ships. Amazing. But I still don't see how that would matter against a missile that has already reached attack range and has decided to fire.
165 seconds is still insanely long time in battle, when missile salvos are arriving several times per minute. That is another reason why CM engagement range is far out: if the ships will need to roll to interpose wedge, they can't fire CMs any more. The ability to fire off-bore wasn't present then and I don't think it applies to CMs even now.
That means that if you fire 5 waves of CMs, those are all the CMs you're going to fire from the wall on 10+ waves of shipkillers. The first wave will probably only be able to attack the first, maybe the second salvo before its own wedges burn out. Though the first salvo is probably the thickest, when hull-mounted missile racks were flushed. The other CM waves will go through progressively more shipkiller salvos.
Anyway, I think eliminating the missile's warning that it is about to fire and then dropping the wedge will increase the survivability of the missile to near perfect. If targeting radar is tracking a very big and bright wedge and then the very bright spotlight of the wedge suddenly goes dark, I do not think that tracking can recover in seconds. The tactic would then require PDLCs to continuously fire in hopes of destroying the missile by rapid fire. The end result would cause saturation by over-indulgence.
Remember the wedge is gravitic, so seen at FTL speeds. At this range it hardly matters, though.
I think the tracking radars are constantly blasting the battlespace, looking for missiles. They aren't waiting for the wedges to drop. That means there is a pulse that was about to be deflected/absorbed by the missile's wedge but wasn't because the missile dropped the wedge. It will then continue for the few km (few microseconds) until finding the missile, then reflect back. The problem is that the missile is also turning to fire at the same time, so there's a race around the clock for the radar pulse to arrive back at the antennas, be processed and a PDLC to fire, before the missile does.
The discussion was whether a smaller missile body would make this harder. In theory, yes.
However, remember the conditions were were discussing: MDMs at near terminal velocity. That means those missiles are at around 0.8c. If it can slew and fire on a target in 0.25s, that means it must drop the wedge that much time before passing through the wall so it can see down, past the wedge of the ship it's targetting. That means it's 0.2 light-seconds away when it does, which is 60,000 km. At that range, the missile is face-on, not lengthwise. The length of the missile hardly matters.
Similarly, for the ship being targeted, by the time the missile has come over the lip of wedge and is about to fire, it's rotated to be face-on again.
What could help, though, is the rate of rotation. A smaller missile body would have a smaller moment of inertia. During the final attack stage, it's rotating using regular physics, not the wedge. This could allow it to rotate faster, therefore allow it to drop the wedge closer and/or have a more accurate rotation.
It appears as if the Manticorans knew that the Havenites had concentrated fire on just two ships even before either salvo had arrived. It is as I understood things to be as well. I think the targets can be determined by the missiles’ bearings (flight profile).
Yes, they can tell that. But I don't recall being given a precise time of when that happened. The reaction from McKeon clearly indicates the screen could do nothing about that, so does that imply it was past them?
Also, this was very early First War, with very untrained Peep crews who had been promoted above their expertise level. They may have given the game away too soon. But even if that is the case, we've seen even the SLN be able to tell only a few ships were targeted in RMN strikes, so this isn't the full explanation.
The missiles are being destroyed before they reach attack range and before dropping the wedge. However, since the wedge is useful to the enemy to target the missiles, I still think that once the missiles reach attack range, or just shy of attack range, that dropping the wedge sooner while the lions share of the missile body has been shed might save more of them from destruction.
Missiles are flying with their throats facing the ships they are going to attack, because that's how wedges work and because of where the sensors are placed in the missile. That means they are vulnerable to down-the-throat shots from the PDLCs.
The question is whose PDLCs. If the wallers have turned wedge-on, at this stage in the development, they couldn't fire at anything except for the missiles that, having dropped their wedges, flew through the formation and showed themselves past the ship wedges. The screen wouldn't have turned wedge on - it would still be broadside on to the missiles, before and after the missiles passed them. Their PDLCs could still fire at the missiles.
But that's not what the passage is saying. It's talking about the PDLCs aboard the wall.
