Roland DD or not?

SharkHunter wrote:We're thinking similarly, I'm calling the salvo size Destroyer, because the PNS Vaubon light cruiser (in Honor among Enemies) could throw nine per side = 36 in a spun/stacked salvo. -Cruiser thacking weight not on a per missile basis, on a per-killable opponent basis. A Roland can ship-kill any non-Haven sector battle cruiser in a few stacked salvos, but it likely doesn't have the ammunition supply to take out an SD unless it's a golden BB, though the -G makes a mission kill on any ship more likely.

PNS Vaubon never demonstrated a 36 missile broadside. With possibly the best light ship tactical staff in the PNS, she could spin pump and control just an 18. That was probably her max control load, and I'm willing to bet that without Shannon Foraker in fire control a sister ship could not have held positive control of even the 18. She virtually certainly could not control a 36 bird salvo. At that point in the war, and in fire control development, no ship near her size could do that, not even the Mantis. A Valiant (the latest model RMN CL at the time, and also a slightly 'missile-heavy' design) could manage perhaps 20-22.

The real secret power of the Roland is not so much how she gets the birds into space in salvo proximity. It is that she can control AT LEAST 24 birds per salvo. If she has the same level of control redundancy that was built into the earlier designed Sag-C, she can probably control 38 birds in a salvo if undamaged. And she doesn't need to use an awkward and demanding rolling launch to do it.

dreamrider

SharkHunter wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:Yes! Let's call them frigates, just so we can tell RFC, yes there is a role for frigates in the new galaxy.

You fallsfromtrees. Me falls on floor laughing. I will even back you up temporarily* because those danged American heavy frigates in the age of sail such as the USS Constitution were about 50% of the weight and gunnery of a ship of the line.

*I admit to being bribable into submission on any topic by a signed copy of anything Honorverse by runsforcelery. As opposed to Nimitz who is bribable with celery.

You know, he signs stuff (more than he should, really, given his wrist ailment) for FREE if you show up anywhere he is at...and he tells you secrets, if you are able to break the misdirection, code, and cypher.

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:...snip...

The real secret power of the Roland is not so much how she gets the birds into space in salvo proximity. It is that she can control AT LEAST 24 birds per salvo. If she has the same level of control redundancy that was built into the earlier designed Sag-C, she can probably control 38 birds in a salvo if undamaged. And she doesn't need to use an awkward and demanding rolling launch to do it.

dreamrider

A nit.

The Roland can control a 36 Mk 16 missiles. See http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/85/1

This ship has sufficient control links to control up to 36 Mk 16s and 40 CMs simultaneously. (And, no, I'm not going to tell you how they got that much fire control into her.)

Hope it helps,
T2M

I wonder...

If a Roland can control 40 CMs simultaneously, does it mean that an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as big as a Roland could control 2000 if it dedicated the same kind of mass into defense?


Of course, by using its Keyholes, an Invictus could control seven full CM launches, which comes at 850+, and even a KH2 is smaller than a Roland - so fire control takes now a lot less space than it used to.

Belial666 wrote:I wonder...

If a Roland can control 40 CMs simultaneously, does it mean that an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as big as a Roland could control 2000 if it dedicated the same kind of mass into defense?


Of course, by using its Keyholes, an Invictus could control seven full CM launches, which comes at 850+, and even a KH2 is smaller than a Roland - so fire control takes now a lot less space than it used to.

I don't think so. If what you mean by making an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as big as a Roland is really making an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as long as a Roland, maybe.

But ships in the real world, as well as the Honorverse, don't scale that way. Making something bigger means all 3 dimensions of height (draught), width (beam) and length, not just length.

Vince wrote:

Belial666 wrote:I wonder...

If a Roland can control 40 CMs simultaneously, does it mean that an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as big as a Roland could control 2000 if it dedicated the same kind of mass into defense?


Of course, by using its Keyholes, an Invictus could control seven full CM launches, which comes at 850+, and even a KH2 is smaller than a Roland - so fire control takes now a lot less space than it used to.

I don't think so. If what you mean by making an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as big as a Roland is really making an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as long as a Roland, maybe.

But ships in the real world, as well as the Honorverse, don't scale that way. Making something bigger means all 3 dimensions of height (draught), width (beam) and length, not just length.

Granted. And that will have an effect on some aspects of performance, for better or for worse - granted, insisted even. What effect does it have on fire control capacity though? (I ask in pure curiosity; I have no dog in this hunt, I mean to defend no position.)

Belial666 wrote:I wonder...

If a Roland can control 40 CMs simultaneously, does it mean that an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as big as a Roland could control 2000 if it dedicated the same kind of mass into defense?

Of course, by using its Keyholes, an Invictus could control seven full CM launches, which comes at 850+, and even a KH2 is smaller than a Roland - so fire control takes now a lot less space than it used to.

Vince wrote:I don't think so. If what you mean by making an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as big as a Roland is really making an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as long as a Roland, maybe.

But ships in the real world, as well as the Honorverse, don't scale that way. Making something bigger means all 3 dimensions of height (draught), width (beam) and length, not just length.

JeffEngel wrote:Granted. And that will have an effect on some aspects of performance, for better or for worse - granted, insisted even. What effect does it have on fire control capacity though? (I ask in pure curiosity; I have no dog in this hunt, I mean to defend no position.)

Vince wrote:The fire control transceivers are mounted on the surface area of the ship (at least for light-speed controlled missiles, Apollo might follow different rules). Change the length by increasing it 50 times will increase the surface area of the ship by the same amount. But if you increase the total volume by 50 times, you will not just change the length, but the draught and beam as well.

Since the Honorverse ships are somewhat cylinder shaped, you can use the equations of a cylinder to determine approximately what the volume/surface area is for them.

I'll post back the numbers later (have to go), or you can run them yourself.

Update -- Here are the numbers for anyone who wants them:

From House of Steel:

Roland-class destroyer
Dimensions: 446 x 54 x 45 m

Since we are using a cylinder for approximating surface area, assume a diameter of 50m. This gives a radius of 25m.

Surface area of a cylinder:
A = length * (2 * pi * radius)

Surface area of Roland = 70,058 m^2

Increasing the size of the Roland by 50 times. If we just increase length by 50, the surface area increases by the same factor of 50:

Long Roland surface area = 3,502,900 m^2

But Honorverse and real world ships don't scale that way. If we increase the total volume of a Roland by 50, but increase each dimension by the same multiplier (not 50), not just the length:
Since each dimension increases by the same amount take the cube root of 50 = 3.7 for the actual multiplier.

Now applying the multiplier and solving to find the surface area of Big Roland:

A = 1,650 * (2 * pi * 93)
Big Roland surface area equals = 964,155 m^2

Comparing the surface area of Roland to Big Roland:

B = R * x
964,155 m^2 = 70,058 m^2 * x
x = 14

Comparing the surface area of Roland to Long Roland:

L = R * x
3,502,900 m^2 = 70,058 m^2* x
x = 50

Comparing the surface area of Big Roland to Long Roland:

L = B * x
3,502,900 m^2 = 964,155 m^2 * x
x = 3.6

Note that a long Roland would increase the surface area of a Roland by 50 times, while a Big Roland would have its surface area increased by only 14 times, compared to the Roland. And a Long Roland would have approximately 3.6 times the surface area of a Big Roland. This is somewhat of an example of the square-cube law (this law is what David first overlooked, which lead to the Great Resizing).

Notes: By transcievers what I meant was the lightspeed tranmitting/receiving antenna (don't know about Apollo) which have to mounted on the exterior surface. As others have pointed out downthread since my last post in this thread, RFC is using a model for fire-control links that is similar to circuit switching (where one fire-control link controls one missile or control missile) rather than packet switching (where information is single/multi/broad-cast and only the recipient(s) to which it is addressed act on it).

Remember when David started writing about the Honorverse (On Basilisk Station has a copyright date of 1993, and a first hardcover printing date of 1999), home computers that could actually be used by an average consumer didn't come out until 1977 with the Apple II. The very first hard drive for microcomputers came out in 1979 (and was an expensive upgrade). The original IBM PC came out in 1981, as did the first portable (luggable) computer the Osborne I (IIRC David used one of these, or a very similar model). The Macintosh came out in 1984, with the first WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer) interface that was commercially successful. The World Wide Web part of the Internet wasn't open to the public until 1991, only 2 years after it had been invented. Linotype machines were still used by printers (David was a Linotype operator before he turned to other pursuits). So remember that the technology in the Honorverse, while well advanced in some areas, is subject to Technology Marching On or even Zeerust.

Belial666 wrote:I wonder...

If a Roland can control 40 CMs simultaneously, does it mean that an SD-sized ship that's 50 times as big as a Roland could control 2000 if it dedicated the same kind of mass into defense?


Of course, by using its Keyholes, an Invictus could control seven full CM launches, which comes at 850+, and even a KH2 is smaller than a Roland - so fire control takes now a lot less space than it used to.

8 full CM launches.
"They still couldn't control eleven salvos . . . but they could control eight, and each of those eight contained far more missiles than anyone else could have managed."

So that's 1648 CMs under the control of on Invictus (it's rolled so it can pump out CMs from both broadsides + the hammerheads. (84+84+24+14)*8 = 206*8 = 1648.

Vince wrote:The fire control transceivers are mounted on the surface area of the ship (at least for light-speed controlled missiles, Apollo might follow different rules). Change the length by increasing it 50 times will increase the surface area of the ship by the same amount. But if you increase the total volume by 50 times, you will not just change the length, but the draught and beam as wel

You actually posted this while I was writing up my quite similar response. I did have one note that I'll leave here:

I wouldn't expect the correlation between fire control and surface area to track perfectly linearly, because not all the surface features a warship needs scale with its mass. So an SD probably has a greater percentage of it's hull's surface area available to mount fire control links on than a DD does.

Please forgive me if I get the quote orders wrong here; my forum-fu is still weak.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Vince wrote:The fire control transceivers are mounted on the surface area of the ship (at least for light-speed controlled missiles, Apollo might follow different rules). Change the length by increasing it 50 times will increase the surface area of the ship by the same amount. But if you increase the total volume by 50 times, you will not just change the length, but the draught and beam as wel

You actually posted this while I was writing up my quite similar response. I did have one note that I'll leave here:

I wouldn't expect the correlation between fire control and surface area to track perfectly linearly, because not all the surface features a warship needs scale with its mass. So an SD probably has a greater percentage of it's hull's surface area available to mount fire control links on than a DD does.

Is that even the bottleneck though? There's surface fire control transceivers, and that won't be directly proportionate to increased volume, but there's also computational power and energy requirements behind that. That may vary directly with volume, or may even decrease due to economies of scale. (Still not trying to defend a point here - it's just a question thats still open and relevant as far as I personally know.)

Ya know, maybe one of you discussing radio, (Antenna, waveguide, Balun, amplifier, SIGINT) should actually know something about the subject before posting?

Number of missiles able to be controlled has little, to nothing in common with surface area.