new/old dead horse, futher beating requested

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/119/1

and

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/120/1

for starters.

Hi Lyonheart,

With reference to the Solly SDs, I say if you are going to use them, parcel them out in ways and against potential opponents where the have a chance to do some good. Simce they are designed to form wall of battle, sending them out in less than squadron strength probably isn't productive. Also they should have screen available, at minimum some light cruisers who could double at running down opposition the SDs can't catch.
They could serve as nodal response forces for dealing with trouble spots.

As for supply,those colliers you are talking about are at best a very short term fix. Finally someone does have to manufacture the missiles they need, the parts that wear out and get used up. That is the big reason you put them in a system with the capacity to develop the supply these ships will need over time.

I think that you are under estimating the numbers and the extent to which some of these systems reverted to neobarb status and for whom survival, that is, putting food on the table, is the big priority. Putting more than a few lacs and some light crusiers in such systems would be more than they could sustain and they would probably need help with that. There best defense is that they have so little worth taking.

Consider Grayson at the time of Flag in Exile. The reason that using those captured Peep warships to bootstrap up Grayson's navy worked is that even though they were behind on the tech scale, they did have both trained people and industrial capacity that could benefit from the boost up Manticore provided. Otherwise Grayson would have remained dependent on Manticore for defense.

Don

It takes a rather significant amount of time and even more distance to reach that velocity. Interestingly once you reach .3 c you cannot hyper out. So you back off and drive straight at the system for 100 hours to reach .6 c so you can launch your missiles.

Hmm, sitting there watching this, are a couple of SDs. It takes them about 2 -3hours to reach the hyperlimit, then they hyper jump in front of you. You go screaming past them at .4 c, while the shoot the hell out of you. Then they hyper in front of you again....

So I can maybe see a tiny little flaw here.

kzt wrote:It takes a rather significant amount of time and even more distance to reach that velocity. Interestingly once you reach .3 c you cannot hyper out. So you back off and drive straight at the system for 100 hours to reach .6 c so you can launch your missiles.

Hmm, sitting there watching this, are a couple of SDs. It takes them about 2 -3hours to reach the hyperlimit, then they hyper jump in front of you. You go screaming past them at .4 c, while the shoot the hell out of you. Then they hyper in front of you again....

So I can maybe see a tiny little flaw here.

That depends on your sensor capabilities. Can you see an BC's wedge at 30+ light minutes with normal shipborne sensors?

It doesn't take 100 hours to reach 0.6c. A Gryphon-class superdreadnaught with the original compensator as described in House of Steel could do it in 12.6. Also, you don't need to be doing 0.6c to make a decent c-fractional missile strike, given that even SDMs can readily at 0.26c to their base velocity. You can get your missiles' terminal velocity past 0.5c without the launch ship ever exceeding the velocity limit for alpha translation.

And that's assuming the attackers don't make their run from n+1 directions, where n = number of defending SDs.

Yep, math error. However, you can still intercept them. Dividing into smaller, more easily destroyed packages is not a useful tactic unless you are willing to die. And considering that the likely follow up to your success is that the undamaged SDs go to your home world and turn the top 10km of the planets surface into molten lava, I tend to see this as a not terribly useful tactic.

Theemile wrote:

kzt wrote:It takes a rather significant amount of time and even more distance to reach that velocity. Interestingly once you reach .3 c you cannot hyper out. So you back off and drive straight at the system for 100 hours to reach .6 c so you can launch your missiles.

Hmm, sitting there watching this, are a couple of SDs. It takes them about 2 -3hours to reach the hyperlimit, then they hyper jump in front of you. You go screaming past them at .4 c, while the shoot the hell out of you. Then they hyper in front of you again....

So I can maybe see a tiny little flaw here.

That depends on your sensor capabilities. Can you see an BC's wedge at 30+ light minutes with normal shipborne sensors?

I think you have the key to the situation Theemile. How soon you detect the threat will determine the effectiveness of your response. Start your accel far enough out and BCs dont even reach the hyper limit. I would imagine that once missiles are launched start veering away from planet although I suspect that at that speed maneuvering would be pretty limited.

In that battle I mentioned up thread there were two references to cee-fractional missiles. In the one reference, Honor worries about losing both SDs and forts to that kind of fire if she tried to stay back in the forts weapons envelop. That is where I come up with the idea.

Don

n7axw wrote:In that battle I mentioned up thread there were two references to cee-fractional missiles. In the one reference, Honor worries about losing both SDs and forts to that kind of fire if she tried to stay back in the forts weapons envelop. That is where I come up with the idea.

Long range Cfrac ballistic fire won't possibly damage ships, as they have wedges. They they will maneuver to evade and if worst comes to worst they will simply roll ship. Most forts have wedges too. So it's a terror tactic that results in you getting your home world slagged.

This is useful exactly how?

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:In that battle I mentioned up thread there were two references to cee-fractional missiles. In the one reference, Honor worries about losing both SDs and forts to that kind of fire if she tried to stay back in the forts weapons envelop. That is where I come up with the idea.

Long range Cfrac ballistic fire won't possibly damage ships, as they have wedges. They they will maneuver to evade and if worst comes to worst they will simply roll ship. Most forts have wedges too. So it's a terror tactic that results in you getting your home world slagged.

This is useful exactly how?

No, it's a viable tactic for taking out orbital infrastructure, which doesn't have wedges. That was the great fear in the battles defending Grayson, that the attackers would destroy the orbital farms. Also, even if someone commits an Eridani violation against the SEM, it won't retaliate with a violation of its own.

Dafmeister wrote:No, it's a viable tactic for taking out orbital infrastructure, which doesn't have wedges. That was the great fear in the battles defending Grayson, that the attackers would destroy the orbital farms. Also, even if someone commits an Eridani violation against the SEM, it won't retaliate with a violation of its own.

Want to bet the lives of everyone you know on the assumption that a ship CO can't possibly have a different opinion about what is a reasonable response?