?

Theemile wrote:To edit your text above, " you cannot shut down and restart missile drives." It's just plain honorverse physics.

Thank you. Accidently omitting the negative, "can" instead of "can't", is the most confusing and annoying typo.

cthia wrote:I appreciate the musings on possible workarounds. It is truly interesting. You guys really shouldn't give my warped brain any toys to play with.

However, I wasn't suggesting two wedges being active simultaneously. The separated stage would separate moments before entering attack range and would contain only reactor housing and graser. Ditto for main missile. Main missile could possibly contain an additional stage which lights off after it clears the separated stage.

I was under the impression that the wedges are dropped before the missile fires, thus are no longer needed after the missile reaches attack range? No?

At any rate, I'm going for a missile which separates into two distinctly different sections which fire independently. That would confound point defense much like Shannon's Tripple Ripple confounded Manty doctrine. At least until adjustments are made. Like against Shannon's TR. But then the MA can alter time of separation.

tlb already addressed how little time there is between wedge drop and warhead detonation.

It's my understanding that the Cataphract missile stages (drops the spent first stage) because the 2nd stage drive can't lug it along.
That means it can't separate just before attack range unless
a) attack range is very close (where you don't need the 2nd stage - about 13.5 million km for even the latest Cataphract), or
b) the target didn't maneuver so that both stages can reach attack range after a ballistic coast.

Though oddly, the 75 second sprint stage operates for so little time that hitting a target at about 27.5 million km (near the apparent edge of powered flight for the latest tweaked Cataphracts) the ballistic booster stage would show up just 13 seconds after the powered 2nd stage. But, unable to maneuver, odds are that it wouldn't pass within 30,000 km of the target.
And those odds get worse as the range lengthens requiring longer and longer ballistic segments before the 2nd stage lights off.

And of course for the booster to fire a weapon independently it'd need to be enlarged to mount its own warhead and targeting sensors.


So again, you're making the thing larger and more expensive -- and now its for a booster stage warhead system that can only pass within laserhead range by luck due to inability to maneuver after the stage's drive burns out. I just noticed that the latest Cataphract already got larger, only 6 now fitting in a pod - which implies that they can no longer be fired from existing missile tubes. And this would be yet again larger.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I appreciate the musings on possible workarounds. It is truly interesting. You guys really shouldn't give my warped brain any toys to play with.

However, I wasn't suggesting two wedges being active simultaneously. The separated stage would separate moments before entering attack range and would contain only reactor housing and graser. Ditto for main missile. Main missile could possibly contain an additional stage which lights off after it clears the separated stage.

I was under the impression that the wedges are dropped before the missile fires, thus are no longer needed after the missile reaches attack range? No?

At any rate, I'm going for a missile which separates into two distinctly different sections which fire independently. That would confound point defense much like Shannon's Tripple Ripple confounded Manty doctrine. At least until adjustments are made. Like against Shannon's TR. But then the MA can alter time of separation.

tlb already addressed how little time there is between wedge drop and warhead detonation.

It's my understanding that the Cataphract missile stages (drops the spent first stage) because the 2nd stage drive can't lug it along.
That means it can't separate just before attack range unless
a) attack range is very close (where you don't need the 2nd stage - about 13.5 million km for even the latest Cataphract), or
b) the target didn't maneuver so that both stages can reach attack range after a ballistic coast.

Though oddly, the 75 second sprint stage operates for so little time that hitting a target at about 27.5 million km (near the apparent edge of powered flight for the latest tweaked Cataphracts) the ballistic booster stage would show up just 13 seconds after the powered 2nd stage. But, unable to maneuver, odds are that it wouldn't pass within 30,000 km of the target.
And those odds get worse as the range lengthens requiring longer and longer ballistic segments before the 2nd stage lights off.

And of course for the booster to fire a weapon independently it'd need to be enlarged to mount its own warhead and targeting sensors.


So again, you're making the thing larger and more expensive -- and now its for a booster stage warhead system that can only pass within laserhead range by luck due to inability to maneuver after the stage's drive burns out. I just noticed that the latest Cataphract already got larger, only 6 now fitting in a pod - which implies that they can no longer be fired from existing missile tubes. And this would be yet again larger.

Do notice that I said this new missile would be made possible when the MA breaks the secret of the miniaturized reactor. Why would there need to be addition sensors? It's about to fire. Are the Cataphracts laserheads directional as well?

cthia wrote:Do notice that I said this new missile would be made possible when the MA breaks the secret of the miniaturized reactor. Why would there need to be addition sensors? It's about to fire. Are the Cataphracts laserheads directional as well?

On the previous page I gave you an idea for a missile with multiple one-shot grasers.

When the laser rods are thrown out, there is time allowed for them to adjust and point in the direction of the target, so the laser-head does need targeting instrumentation.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:tlb already addressed how little time there is between wedge drop and warhead detonation.

It's my understanding that the Cataphract missile stages (drops the spent first stage) because the 2nd stage drive can't lug it along.
That means it can't separate just before attack range unless
a) attack range is very close (where you don't need the 2nd stage - about 13.5 million km for even the latest Cataphract), or
b) the target didn't maneuver so that both stages can reach attack range after a ballistic coast.

Though oddly, the 75 second sprint stage operates for so little time that hitting a target at about 27.5 million km (near the apparent edge of powered flight for the latest tweaked Cataphracts) the ballistic booster stage would show up just 13 seconds after the powered 2nd stage. But, unable to maneuver, odds are that it wouldn't pass within 30,000 km of the target.
And those odds get worse as the range lengthens requiring longer and longer ballistic segments before the 2nd stage lights off.

And of course for the booster to fire a weapon independently it'd need to be enlarged to mount its own warhead and targeting sensors.


So again, you're making the thing larger and more expensive -- and now its for a booster stage warhead system that can only pass within laserhead range by luck due to inability to maneuver after the stage's drive burns out. I just noticed that the latest Cataphract already got larger, only 6 now fitting in a pod - which implies that they can no longer be fired from existing missile tubes. And this would be yet again larger.

Do notice that I said this new missile would be made possible when the MA breaks the secret of the miniaturized reactor. Why would there need to be addition sensors? It's about to fire. Are the Cataphracts laserheads directional as well?

Actually you said "What if the fission secret is broken, and the MA design a missile that separates at the opportune time into two functioning missiles? " which confused me because missiles don't use fission; only the LACs do. Missiles use capacitors or micro-fusion power plants.

But lets look a micro-fusion reactors for missiles. They're not actually that small.

* They are larger than the capacitors needed to power even an ERM single drive missile -- which is no small part of why Manticore didn't roll out a 2nd generation ERM/LERM that's micro-fusion power. It'd make the missile basically as large as a Mk16 without the extra range you'd get from a Mk16.

* They are IIRC, if anything, a little larger than the capacitors you'd need to power a two drive missile. But close enough that all the trade-offs for micro-fusion were still considered worth it for the Mk16 in order to get the improved jamming/decoy capabilities.

* They are significantly smaller than the capacitors you'd need to power a three drive missile; so the Mk23s MDM are smaller than the old Mk41s plus get extra power for jamming/decoy. All they give up is a slower firing rate and the need for launch tubes with armor cofferdaming to deal with reactor failure in the tube.




A Cataphract, with its 75s endurance 2nd stage (180+75s combined) would fall between and 225s ERM and 180+180s DDM for capacitor volume. But with capacitors it's trivial to split the power up with the booster stage and upper "attack" stage carrying only their own capacitors. With a reactor it isn't. So switching to a micro-fusion plant (assuming roughly the same size/refinement as the RMNs) pushes up the size of a Cataphract and add some real complications.

Reactors + fuel should be about 25-30% larger than the capacitors formerly needed to power the Cataphract's drive. And worse the vast majority of that volume is the reactor; so you now can't effectively put each stage's power within just that stage.

Either the booster stage gets a bit bigger and the attack stage still needs capacitors for after separation, or the attack stage gets to triple or quadruple in size to fit in the reactor and the boost stage gets enough capacitors to run the warhead you want added to it.

* The size impact would be lower if you kept the reactor in the booster; but then the attack stage doesn't get the extra power for jamming/decoy so you give up that advantage of a reactor.

* The size impact would be extreme if you stuck the reactor in the upper stage as you can't shrink the booster length because you still need every centimeter of that physical separation to keep the upper stage's drive from being damaged by the booster drive. (OTOH that'd give you lots of spare volume in the booster to stick a warhead -- shame the overall missile ballooned up so much). Also it it not at all clear that a CM drive could handle an upper stage that had grown that large.

* I'm discounting the worst impact size case of putting a separate micro-fusion reactor in each stage

So micro-fusion, while a clear win for MDMs and an understandable trade-off for true DDMs, seems poorly matched to 2 stage missiles.



But anyway, let's get back to the question of would the booster need sensors. Yes, I think it would. All laserheads are extremely directional. You need each independent lasing rod of the warhead pointed with fantastic precision at the spot(s) you believe the target to be.

For a laserhead it's close enough it's not quite as bad as Theemile's analogy where you're trying to hit the New York Zoo from the Moon. But if you're sensors had nailed an SD sized target location perfectly you'd still need the rod pointed to +/- 0.6 seconds of arc (0.000191 degrees) to be sure you'd actually hit that target!
So if you didn't have the best sensor reading you could then in the analogy you'd be very lucky to even hit Manhattan - which would be a clean miss on the entire target ship.

I don't think the attack stage would be able to provide accurate enough targeting details from its sensors to the booster stage that had fallen so far behind it.

(Maybe if the attack stage never used its drive, so they were only separated by enough range to avoid each other's warheads interfering they'd be able to share sensor data. But then you're restricted to very close ranges any why'd you bother to build a separate stage with it's own drive if you're unwilling to use that capability in order to drag an extra warhead along?)


From a technical level none of this is actually impossible. But micro-fusion power doesn't seem to help and anything you did would drive up the size of the missile (letting you carry fewer of them) for what seems, to me, to be a very situationally dependent possible benefit.

cthia wrote:However, I wasn't suggesting two wedges being active simultaneously. The separated stage would separate moments before entering attack range and would contain only reactor housing and graser. Ditto for main missile. Main missile could possibly contain an additional stage which lights off after it clears the separated stage.

Not with current technology at the hands of the MAlign and SLN. The whole reason they have multiple stages is that they don't have the quantum gravitic baffle that allows multiple impeller rings not to mutually destroy. So if you tack yet another stage, we're talking about a missile 100m long or so. It couldn't be fired from any shipboard launcher. Even with a baffle, you'd need something around twice as long as a regular SDM missile or the size of an RMN MDM or current Cataphract, as the requirements of impellers dictate where relative to the body of the missile it needs to be.

Besides, if you have baffles, don't make a missile twice as long as you need but can be fired only from the biggest ships. Make two missiles!

Dropping something without wedge power has the problem that it has to be dropped behind the wedge. To drop ahead, the wedge section would need to accelerate away from the target, which is sub-optimal. Dropping behind doesn't compromise the wedge-powered section, but in turn the wedge is in the way of whatever was dropped and the target. Not a good combination either.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:However, I wasn't suggesting two wedges being active simultaneously. The separated stage would separate moments before entering attack range and would contain only reactor housing and graser. Ditto for main missile. Main missile could possibly contain an additional stage which lights off after it clears the separated stage.

Not with current technology at the hands of the MAlign and SLN. The whole reason they have multiple stages is that they don't have the quantum gravitic baffle that allows multiple impeller rings not to mutually destroy. So if you tack yet another stage, we're talking about a missile 100m long or so. It couldn't be fired from any shipboard launcher. Even with a baffle, you'd need something around twice as long as a regular SDM missile or the size of an RMN MDM or current Cataphract, as the requirements of impellers dictate where relative to the body of the missile it needs to be.

Besides, if you have baffles, don't make a missile twice as long as you need but can be fired only from the biggest ships. Make two missiles!

Dropping something without wedge power has the problem that it has to be dropped behind the wedge. To drop ahead, the wedge section would need to accelerate away from the target, which is sub-optimal. Dropping behind doesn't compromise the wedge-powered section, but in turn the wedge is in the way of whatever was dropped and the target. Not a good combination either.

Thanks a bunch. I see the problem because of the concise explanation. Of course I'll have to run it by Sonja. I'm the only one who can. She loses her poise with everyone else. LOL

Your post made me wonder about something else, but first, I wasn't thinking about a tube launched missile. I'm talking about specialized missiles for specific circumstances, dropped off like those from the Charles Ward FSV.

At any rate, since the LD is wedgeless, can it carry pods without a sacrifice in performance? I noticed that every Navy developed pods. Even the Sols.

cthia wrote:At any rate, since the LD is wedgeless, can it carry pods without a sacrifice in performance? I noticed that every Navy developed pods. Even the Sols.

Sure it can carry missile pods and there is no reason to think it would affect performance. It was deigned as a pod layer after all, the same as the Shark-class that were the training versions.

I have been trying to get you to notice an idea I had, but if you are not interesting I will peddle it somewhere else. From a post on the previous page:

What if your one-shot graser was put into a minimum pod with targeting electronics and a plasma capacitor fed by the missile? Then your missiles has several of these pods and drops them one at a time when it is in attack range, while it continues to accelerate; the grasers are set to fire as soon as they acquire their target (the onboard system having been updated by the missile before the drop).

The missile should have one final graser that is not to be dropped to serve as the terminal shot.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:At any rate, since the LD is wedgeless, can it carry pods without a sacrifice in performance? I noticed that every Navy developed pods. Even the Sols.

Sure it can carry missile pods and there is no reason to think it would affect performance. It was deigned as a pod layer after all, the same as the Shark-class that were the training versions.

I have been trying to get you to notice an idea I had, but if you are not interesting I will peddle it somewhere else. From a post on the previous page:

What if your one-shot graser was put into a minimum pod with targeting electronics and a plasma capacitor fed by the missile? Then your missiles has several of these pods and drops them one at a time when it is in attack range, while it continues to accelerate; the grasers are set to fire as soon as they acquire their target (the onboard system having been updated by the missile before the drop).

The missile should have one final graser that is not to be dropped to serve as the terminal shot.

Oops! I plum forgot your post. A lot is happening on the home front.

Actually I love the idea! It's brilliant! Manticoran minds are the best in the galaxy. I knew they weren't all shipped off to Bolthole.

I see these kinds of drops as one of the main tactics of the LD. In fact, I was going to propose some sort of variant of it as an updated version of mines that an LD can lay in a system, like Torch. Mines seem to be one technology that needs a face-lift. These things can be called webs, and they can be activated by some sort of passive tripwire, which some webs have.

Can plasma capacitors supply the energy requirement of an MA graser? At any rate, your brainchild would accomplish what I wanted. Confuse point defense.

Oh, I was talking about carrying pods externally on the hull but I forgot that LDs are podlayers.

cthia wrote:
At any rate, since the LD is wedgeless, can it carry pods without a sacrifice in performance? I noticed that every Navy developed pods. Even the Sols.

Well the most trivial answer is: of course, internally, since it's a pod layer.

But in terms of towed pods; well that's technically unknown. But logically its acceleration shouldn't be affected by whether or not the pods are internal or have been rolled and are being towed - it's the same mass and so the acceleration should be the same.

However if you're trying to start with a full pod bay and then tow a bunch of additional pods; well then it might start to lose some acceleration due to excessive mass. Seems to me that that would depends on how much reserve power its spider drive has.

* Unlike a compensator the spider drive shouldn't care how about the volume of object it's moving.
* However unlike a wedge it does care about the mass of the object it's moving.

There's probably some redundancy in an LD's spider drive to let it suffer a bit of damage before acceleration drops below the emergency max it's set up for (310g accel w/ 9g experienced by the crew). And if the LD is willing to give up the ability to use its extra emergency acceleration 100g (without first ditching all the pods) it can presumably tow quite a lot of extra mass and still manage its normal max 210g.

OTOH unlike with a compensator the towed pods are not protected in any way from the ship's acceleration so everything in them needs to handle anything from 150-310g. [edit: ignore the following]And finally how are you towing them. Tractor beams might have grav signatures that are visible to FTL detectors at sufficiently close range. I know conventional ships can tow pods at low accel while still hiding, but I don't know if the stealth tricks they play with their wedge might hide tractor beam emissions in a way you couldn't with a wedge. However you can presumably go with strap on pods or some other kind of physical linkage; though it'd have to be very strong and that might limit the total number you can really attach for towing.[/edit]