Forcing a Roland to withdraw...

Until the sollies actually manage to improve their anti missile defense i do not see them being able to get close enough or last long enough to close with a roland and thus force them to withdraw. Fot now the sollies going against a roland squadron is like a group of civil war infantry going against a Mark 42 MG nest. it just doesnt work.

SharkHunter wrote:Even when found though, an even giving the Cataphracts a ballistic phase I wonder if the Roland would be able to move far enough outside the SLN missile's targeting guestimate and interpose wedge / countermeasures enough for the light speed delay which the SLN missiles endure to still avoid being driven off station.

The Roland could roll at almost any range, even without a ballistic phase.

But it's unlikely to be able to maneuver clear of the CM terminal stage's targeting basket - not at any reasonable engagement range. At 30 million km (Mk16 powered range) the Cataphract needs to coast for 90 seconds between stages. But in that 90 seconds the Roland's non-emergency max power of 702g only lets it accelerate another 310 km - so that's the maximum it could deviate from it's preexisting base vector. Not enough (IMHO) to escape a missile sensors.


But I agree that the real problem would be finding and closing with the Roland in the first place. You're not likely to locate it and, if located, you're too slow to chase it down anyway. Most likely you're not going to get a chance to "chase it off" unless the Roland decides to come fight you.

Edit:
One thing that's interesting is that from what we're told in the books, and for the Cataphract numbers to work, it appears that the SLN has missiles and CMs with accelerations equivalent to current Manticoran designs - 92,000g missiles and 130,000g CMs. Both of which are significantly better than Manticore had 20 years ago; prior to the 1st war. (85,000g and 90,500g respectively)
Seems like the League might have been ahead of Manticore in terms of missile node design until quite recently.

Jonathan_S wrote:One thing that's interesting is that from what we're told in the books, and for the Cataphract numbers to work, it appears that the SLN has missiles and CMs with accelerations equivalent to current Manticoran designs - 92,000g missiles and 130,000g CMs. Both of which are significantly better than Manticore had 20 years ago; prior to the 1st war. (85,000g and 90,500g respectively)
Seems like the League might have been ahead of Manticore in terms of missile node design until quite recently.

That's particularly noticeable in Torch of Freedom, where both Rozsak and Luff are astonished that even the Javelin-derived first stage on the Cataphract-B has an accel advantage over Rozsak's Erewhonese (so late-first-war tech) Mk17s. And then the CM-derived second stage...

FLHerne wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:One thing that's interesting is that from what we're told in the books, and for the Cataphract numbers to work, it appears that the SLN has missiles and CMs with accelerations equivalent to current Manticoran designs - 92,000g missiles and 130,000g CMs. Both of which are significantly better than Manticore had 20 years ago; prior to the 1st war. (85,000g and 90,500g respectively)
Seems like the League might have been ahead of Manticore in terms of missile node design until quite recently.

That's particularly noticeable in Torch of Freedom, where both Rozsak and Luff are astonished that even the Javelin-derived first stage on the Cataphract-B has an accel advantage over Rozsak's Erewhonese (so late-first-war tech) Mk17s. And then the CM-derived second stage...

That's one bit from ToF that never made much sense to me. When we're reading about the Manticoran layered CM systems, it seems like the SLN's CM's should be able to come closer in terms of range because of the velocity disparity. Granted, Dazzlers and Dragons Teeth tend to mess with the CM's aim, but reading about what the SLN superdreadnoughts could launch at Spindle or the BC's at Saltash in terms of salvos seems too low if the CM's themselves are that fast. Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:

FLHerne wrote:That's particularly noticeable in Torch of Freedom, where both Rozsak and Luff are astonished that even the Javelin-derived first stage on the Cataphract-B has an accel advantage over Rozsak's Erewhonese (so late-first-war tech) Mk17s. And then the CM-derived second stage...

That's one bit from ToF that never made much sense to me. When we're reading about the Manticoran layered CM systems, it seems like the SLN's CM's should be able to come closer in terms of range because of the velocity disparity. Granted, Dazzlers and Dragons Teeth tend to mess with the CM's aim, but reading about what the SLN superdreadnoughts could launch at Spindle or the BC's at Saltash in terms of salvos seems too low if the CM's themselves are that fast. Thoughts?

While flipping through ToF to refresh myself on that combat I ran across an interesting tidbit that I'd forgotten.

Luff, the commander of the PNE, though the SLN castoffs, upgraded with Aegis (and after being reprogrammed by the ex-State Sec crewmen), and loaded Cataphracts would have been able to was thinking about the "swath they'd be able to cut through Theisman's light units.", and that their MAlign handler pretty much agreed.

That's indirect evidence that as far as PNE and MAlign intel knew that as of ToF, which was after the start of the 2nd war, the RHN hadn't make major improvements to their light units. So they probably don't have anything the equivalent of even the ERM equipped Sag-Bs, Wolfhounds, or Avalons.


But back to your statement, I see where Rozsak thought that the "standard SLN counter-missiles" aren't as good as the Erewhonese CMs. But the best fit numbers I can get from ToF shows that he's wrong - at least in terms of range.
The only hard missile accel numbers I found were for the Eherwonese Mk-17-E ERMs - which seem to show it has the same 92,000/46,000 full/half power accel as I have for the current RMN missiles.

But there are four things ToF pretty clears show about the Cataphract.
1) The first stage, the Javelin, has an range of 8 million km (11 million km is 3 million km beyond Javelin range) [edit: given Duckk's correction its range is 7,560,000 km]
2) The Javelin has a 3-minute, maximum range burn. (It's not an ERM)
3) The Mk-17-E has a lower accel than the Javelin
4) The Cataphract's range from rest is 16.6 million km.

Combine those and best fit for the Javelin is a max range of 7,938,000 km, from 180 seconds at 50000 G (better that 8.5% quicker than current Mantie missiles) - with a burnout velocity of 88,200 km/s.
[edit: given Duckk's correction the numbers are really 7,565,400 km, from 180 seconds at 47653 g (3.5% better that current Mantie missiles) - with a burnout velocity of 84,060 km/s]

Which means the 2nd stage, based off a SLN CM drive need to be good for the rest of the, just under, 16.6 range. There's more room to guess here, but there's no way the numbers work out to less drive capability that the Mk30 CMs Honor was using as recently as Sidemore. (But no way it's as good as the new Mk31s / Vipers the Manties have now)
Best compromise guess is 140,000 G over 65 seconds.
That gives the combined Cataphract a max powered range of 16,569,350 km.
[edit: given Duckk's correction the numbers are really 98,061 G over 75 seconds. Cataphract powered range of 16,572,713 km]


That's actually a higher CM accel (by about 7.5%) than the Mk30 or Mk31, 5 seconds more drive than the Mk30, but 10 seconds less than the Mk31.
[edit: lower accel (by about 25%), but with the same endurance at the Mk31]

The other extremes of the SLN CM capabilities might be 190000 G over 60 seconds; which seems crazy high accel. Or maybe 130,000 G over 66 seconds.



Anyway, if the SLN CMs suck it's not because of their drives. But their seekers might be even more myopic that Havenite, Erewhonese, of Mantie ones. And if their anti-ship missile launchers are anything to go by, the cyclic rate on their CM launchers much be way less that Haven Sector standards. So no only do their ships definitely mount fewer CM tubes than Haven sector navies, most likely each tube pumps out missiles at less than 1/3rd the rate.

Perhaps the missile drives were also a Technodyne innovation, as well as the multi-stage system. That could mean that standard Solarian missiles are not as good as that--but they might be soon! A frightening thought.

And Erewhon didn't share the details of the PNE missiles with Manticore, so they may not realize that little bit of news.

SWM wrote:Perhaps the missile drives were also a Technodyne innovation, as well as the multi-stage system. That could mean that standard Solarian missiles are not as good as that--but they might be soon! A frightening thought.

And Erewhon didn't share the details of the PNE missiles with Manticore, so they may not realize that little bit of news.

Erewhon might not have, but you can bet that Princess Ruth did. One of the things Torch is not going to do is withhold any useful information from key players in Erewhon, Haven, OR Manticore just because someone else said so. Erewhon wants a strong Torch to guard that dang wormhole, and Torch wants the assistance of the RMN and RHN to upgrade their system defenses. I don't see Berry, W.E.B. du Havel, or anyone else in the powers that be telling Ruth she can't phone home with the data regarding the battle.

SWM wrote:Perhaps the missile drives were also a Technodyne innovation, as well as the multi-stage system. That could mean that standard Solarian missiles are not as good as that--but they might be soon! A frightening thought.

And Erewhon didn't share the details of the PNE missiles with Manticore, so they may not realize that little bit of news.

At least for the first stage of the Cataphract, Rozack identified it's accel profile as the standard one for the SLN Javelin.

So that part doesn't appear to be a new Technodyne (or "Technodyne" ) special variant.


Also, as an aside, the numbers we got for the (actually) Technodyne pods we saw at Monica, had longer burn times, but lower accel (43000 G for 225 s; which would translate into a full power of 86000 G for 75 s).

JeffEngel wrote:

SWM wrote:The Roland is not as small as the destroyers which staked out Havenite systems. That means it is not as stealthy as those smaller cousins.

Well - all else being equal, at least. It'd mean making the assumption that RMN stealth technology hadn't advanced enough to compensate in that time. What do we have for evidence to bear on that?

Not much, just HMS Tristam at New Tuscany, I think, and Tristam's arrival signature was obscured behind Chatterjee's other ships. Zavala didn't bother with stealth at all.

That said, if a slightly older Manticoran DD could hide from first-line Haven sensors, I'd imagine a new build Roland could effectively hide from most "Verge" sensor nets after the initial hyper footprint. The PN under Thurgood didn't pick up the eight out-system GNS battlecruisers, for example, even though they were apparently well within range to be run down if the ships had gone active earlier.

Aside from that, I'd assume that a Roland DD skipper could do something sneaky like stooging around the hyper limit, popping in and out, dropping his or her ship's wedge to near station keeping levels for a brief period, then fire off drones to imitate his ship size, and have those drones fire up occasionally in a somewhat interesting or random direction(s) to keep any "in system" naval presence from localizing his ship to begin with.

Withdraw from what?

Define you mission.

If you have one Roland as an escort for 5 merchant ships and it gets jumped by 4 SLN crusiers, things are going to get real intereting - for the crusiers. Amoung other things, the merchants could scatter right about the time the Roland took out the 1st. Or perhaps they could wait unti the second CA gets crippled? Can a Roland- concentrating its fire on one ship at a time, "just" cripple all four and let the civilian ships just get away, not bothering to stop to finish off even one CA?

In any case, unless the convoy was ambushed with all 4 CAs in (their) engagement range, things are going to be very bad for the SLN ships. With the range advantage, each of the CAs would have to go way around the Roland to get at the merchants and that plays poorly with their speed advantage. The Roland could still manuver to engage (with it's surperior range) the SLN ships sequentialy and cause all sorts of havoc with the attackers. You don't have to kill them, just render them combat ineffective. It that means only crippling them so they can't catch a merhcantman, so be it. One of the lessons we are supposed to take from the Sagamani battle is you - when confronted with a lot of bad choices- is concentrate on giving your charges the best possible chance to avoid destruction or capture.

You would't actually order up a mission where you told a Roland to take on an SD. If you send a Roland to scout a system and it turns out to be defended by an SD and the other ships mentioned, you run you recon drones to the best of you ability, stay OUT of the engagement range of the opposing ships and return to base with your information.