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Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster
Post by Somtaaw   » Fri Dec 06, 2019 9:39 am

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Somtaaw wrote:So sure a Sag-C can fire all 24*8 lasers simultaneously, but that's only 192 lasers but PDLCs like countermissiles do not have 100% accuracy. So firing all 192 possible lasers at once means for the next 16 seconds any MDM could physically impact your ship (ala Second Grayson, Fearless vs Thunder) and there's nothing you could do to stop them because at MDM terminal velocity they cross the entire PDLC envelop in less than 1 second. Which obviously is a situation you'll stagger your lasers, rather than fire all at once, reducing the chances your (staggered) PDLC's will kill a missile because you're opting for firerate over maximum shots.


If the missiles cross the entire engagement envelope in less than half a second, you want to fire all your 192 lasers in less than half a second too. Any laser you didn't fire is a laser that will definitely not hitting anything. So we're still talking about an average fire rate of 2.6 milliseconds per laser.

Of course, averages are deceptive. As Asimov wrote in one of the Foundation books (Forward the Foundation, I think), "Three mathematicians go duck-hunting; the first fires one metre too high, the second fires a metre too low, the third exclaims 'we got it!'" (to which the counterpart in the conversation asks, "what's a duck?"). Far more likely, the ship will fire in bursts of 24 or 48 lasers (1 or 2 per cluster), so it's firing only once every 31.25 or 62.5 ms. In that time, a missile travelling at 0.8c crossed an additional 9400 or 18800 km.



It all depends on the tactical situation though, I'm pretty certain RFC has stated Manticore, and most of the galaxy for that matter, operate their PDLC's in both manners (steady firerate, or fire every laser simultaneously).

That's why the earlier battles where Manticore fighting against Republican LACs they went for a stream/river of missiles that was going to hit the Republican ships/LACs with hundreds of missiles per second for several minutes continually.... versus slamming them with 1000 missiles at a time every 6+ minutes.

In the second case, firing every single PDLC laser at once is smarter because you have the time between salvos, while your lasers are still unable to cycle twice in a single salvo. In the first case you quite literally CANNOT afford to put an entire cluster out of commission for 16 seconds, or more for non-Manticoran clusters, so you have to stagger those lasers so every cluster has 1 or more shots ready at all times until the stream ends.
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster
Post by Theemile   » Fri Dec 06, 2019 5:13 pm

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Somtaaw wrote:
Theemile wrote: you will not increase the possibility of one of an Invictus' 992 broadside pd lasers (62 clusters of 16 lasers) hitting you? Really? if it takes 2 seconds for 1 laser to cycle, with roughly a thousand lasers, one will be firing every .002 seconds.

Or on a production Sag-C - with 24, 12 emitter PDLCs gives you 288 broadside emitters firing ~.007 seconds each?



We have it in the Shadows book, Saganami-C only have 24 clusters per flank, and each cluster only has 8 lasers with a cycle time of a 8 econds, from when Hexapuma used her PDLCs in force neutralization mode, the Marianne in orbit of Montana.

Shadows of Saganami wrote:Each of a cluster's eight lasers was capable of cycling at one shot every sixteen seconds. That was one shot every two seconds from every cluster in Hexapuma 's starboard broadside


So cycle time on Sag-C is 16 seconds, and I believe the cycle time is the same for the PDLC's that Nike & Invictus use, they just have more lasers per cluster. They can either burst and all 8 lasers of a cluster fire at once putting the entire cluster on cooldown for 16 seconds, or they stagger by varying amounts upto 2 seconds to always have a laser available.

So sure a Sag-C can fire all 24*8 lasers simultaneously, but that's only 192 lasers but PDLCs like countermissiles do not have 100% accuracy. So firing all 192 possible lasers at once means for the next 16 seconds any MDM could physically impact your ship (ala Second Grayson, Fearless vs Thunder) and there's nothing you could do to stop them because at MDM terminal velocity they cross the entire PDLC envelop in less than 1 second. Which obviously is a situation you'll stagger your lasers, rather than fire all at once, reducing the chances your (staggered) PDLC's will kill a missile because you're opting for firerate over maximum shots.


It was stated in UoH that production Sag-Cs got 12 emitter clusters, unlike the initial 6 ships.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster
Post by Sigs   » Sun Dec 22, 2019 2:43 pm

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kzt wrote:A couple of dozen LACs were able to cover a WH. Why would i need thousands of pods?



Isn't that the same as saying that you managed to control contested airspace with F22's and the other guy can do the same except the other guy only has Spitfires. Both are fighters but there may be a technological difference or two.
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster
Post by Sigs   » Sun Dec 22, 2019 2:58 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:However the risk of the Doolittle raid wasn't anywhere near as high as what you're proposing. Enterprise and Hornet were ready to abandon the raid and retreat at high speed if they were detected and the chance that a Japanese carrier force would be in exactly the right place to chase them down on that retreat is pretty low.

As it was they launched earlier than planned because it was sighted by a picket boat. They were just barely within range so they launched the bombers as quickly as possible and retreated at high speed.

So while there was some risk (even well escorted carriers can run into the sights of a submarine) they were taking evasive routing and ready to run the moment they were seen - so the risk was relatively low.

The Risk is fundamentally different, a recce through the WH in Torch would risk at most 1,000 servicemen and a handful of modern ships along with more obsolete vessels. This is out of a GA manpower strength in the 50+ million military personnel and 3,000+ warships vs risking ~5% of your naval manpower and 2/7 of your aircraft carriers... or if you want to look at it a different way 2 of the 3 the IJN wanted to sink at Pearl Harbour. There is a difference in risk but there is also a difference in scale as well and that is the most important part.
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster
Post by Sigs   » Sun Dec 22, 2019 3:58 pm

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Theemile wrote:
Another point, the Doolittle raid had known objectives, known risks, and known return paths (if possible)

The Torch wormhole is a total unknown. If the RMN knew it was the connector to the Malign's wormhole network and homeworld, then I can see a suicide mission. But as far as they know it's just another killer wormhole . Remember - there was no record of Manpower or Mesa every using the wormhole, only rumors that it was a junction. Who doesn't try to exploit a wormhole - almost every one has "SOME" commercial value. The killer aspect alone could have described why the Torch wormhole was never exploited.

So at this point, any suicide mission would just be seen as ... total waste.
Going back and reviewing all of your intelligence from a different point of view after the MA came to light and the GA was formed the fact that they never bothered to investigate what could have potentially been a goldmine would make me exceptionally suspicious. We don't know how long manpower had control over Congo for, but we do know that a company like Manpower would commit tremendous resources at the simple possibility of a WH to me that means that it was surveyed in secret or it was surveyed form the other side quietly.

What we have is a company with no morals that chases $$$ all day everyday forgo an investigation of a potential gold mine, it could be that they did it in secret and it ended up being killer WH but then why cover it up? Most likely answer is that they found something on the other side that was valuable to the MA and/or the survey was done from the other side. Either way I would conduct a recce to try and figure out what is so important on the other end.
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster
Post by kzt   » Sun Dec 22, 2019 4:01 pm

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Sigs wrote:Either way I would conduct a recce to try and figure out what is so important on the other end.

You'll note that they did that. You might also note that nobody involved has ever been seen since.
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster
Post by Sigs   » Sun Dec 22, 2019 4:05 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
So yes, it's suspicious. But it's hard to make an inference as to what was being hidden. All they known is that there were a lot of rumours (many of each easily disproven), no records of transit and the only transit they attempted resulted in the ship not returning. There's a non-negligible chance Manpower never used the wormhole because it doesn't work...

Not too hard when they start looking at it after knowing the MA exists. Things that made no sense and/or were not important suddenly become exceptionally important especially when you add the little tibits like the MA using the PN in Exile to attack torch and try to destroy them, to me that would start me down the path or weather they wanted Torch gone because of the ex-slaves and what they represent or do they want them gone so that no one would bother investigating a WH once Harvest Joy didn't come back. After the MA became a known entity to the GA there would be a lot of revisiting of old intelligence and theories to see if anything comes to light, a lot of random and seemingly unconnected things will begin to make a hell of a lot of sense.
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster
Post by Sigs   » Sun Dec 22, 2019 4:10 pm

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kzt wrote:You'll note that they did that. You might also note that nobody involved has ever been seen since.

You'll also note that they did send only a CA that was not expecting trouble on the other end, what I'm saying is to a recce in such a manner as to give you a chance to get some of your people back. Sending 1 ship through against an unknown force makes it an easy target, sending 50 CA/CL/DD and a few FF's thrown in the mix gives the defenders plenty of targets and gives your force a chance to get some of your people away. Hell throw in a force of 120-240 dispatch boats with only 10% of them manned and you have increased your chances exponentially.
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster
Post by kzt   » Sun Dec 22, 2019 4:19 pm

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Sigs wrote:
kzt wrote:You'll note that they did that. You might also note that nobody involved has ever been seen since.

You'll also note that they did send only a CA that was not expecting trouble on the other end, what I'm saying is to a recce in such a manner as to give you a chance to get some of your people back. Sending 1 ship through against an unknown force makes it an easy target, sending 50 CA/CL/DD and a few FF's thrown in the mix gives the defenders plenty of targets and gives your force a chance to get some of your people away. Hell throw in a force of 120-240 dispatch boats with only 10% of them manned and you have increased your chances exponentially.

Then four completely invisible Sharks will simply have a fire queue for their grasers that takes maybe two minutes for the computer to get through. Assuming the first few reactor explosions don't destroy the rest of the ships in the grav wave.
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster
Post by Galactic Sapper   » Sun Dec 22, 2019 5:31 pm

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kzt wrote:
Sigs wrote:Either way I would conduct a recce to try and figure out what is so important on the other end.

You'll note that they did that. You might also note that nobody involved has ever been seen since.

My guess is in the next book 10th Fleet is going to find a clue in a Manpower database on Mesa that was not sufficiently sanitized. It won't tell them the location of the other terminus but will definitively tell the GA that the wormhole was surveyed and transited safely. Where the GA goes from there, only RFC knows.
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