CLACs

MAD-4A wrote:Also “see-lack” for me. I was thinking maybe light CLACs, BB/Nike II size with reduced wings but cheaper & higher accel, for raiding.

The thing is that you pretty much need to get to DN-size for a useful number of LACs.

One could always just forego the LAC and just make Frigates. One frigate is worth two or three LAC. Many can be carried by large modular freighters dropped at the edge of a system and then hyper their own way in. A rendezvous can be set outside the system. Everyone hyperspaces there and boards the freighter and then off they go. Heck the CLAC wouldn't even need go into the system. Deploying the Frigates out of the system at the rendezvous point or even in hyperspace.

A Nat Turner has twin Grasers and more missiles than a Ferret. Better PD and CM. Can use hyperspace and while bottle space is limited carrying it most of the way, deploying in hyperspace and retrieving in hyperspace, would limit its fuel usages.

The biggest problem with the LAC is its lack of transport should the CLAC be destroyed. Not a Nat Turner problem. The power needs of the shrike makes it unable to use both bucklers, while a Nat Turner with bottle doesn't suffer this problem.

LAC are Lacking. Time to replace them.

Crown Loyalist wrote:For me, it sounds like the Manties will eventually split their carrier classes into two. First, the the waller-CLAC, which is as tough as a SD(P) or tougher, and which can contribute meaningfully to the missile defense of the wall even without its LACs. Second, the cruiser-CLAC, which is designed to basically fit into the capabilities bracket that ranges from light cruisers to battlecruisers (and, like them, not fight in the wall).

I'm just not sure I agree with RFC on the ideal being two different classes of CLACs, but that is probably because I don't understand the difference in the capabilities of each class. How much of the carrying capacity of a CLAC do you need to cut in order to make it a survivable platform? Without knowing the answer to that question I can't really answer whether it makes sense to split the CLAC into the waller and cruiser varieties.

My guess is that the fleet carrier not only has increased capacity, but is also cheaper, and easier to build. The hard carriers are supposed to carry the full antimissile armament of a SD, thus providing a significant increase themselves, but to use it you have to allow getting shot at in the first place. But important is also that a CLAC can reammunition more than its own wing, so you only need a few to actually accompany the wall.

"Have you ever shot skeet? It is much better at stress relief then golf. In the game, there is are two places where the skeet are thrown from, called the houses. They are on the two points of a semicircle, with station 1 and 7 basicly right at the houses, 2 through 6 evenly distributed around the curve of the circle with 4 on the farthest point, and 8 directly between the houses"

Yes, a lot. Never like golf but really love skeet.
Stations 1, 7 and 8 are relatively easier from the perspective that the targets are either comming at you or going directly away from you with 1 and 7 or at you for 8. "All" (and I use that term VERY loosely) you have to take into account is change of hight and relative speed as opposed to having to deal with left to right or right to left changes at all the other statons.

For those who haven't tried it, this doesn't begin to get into effects of wind, rain, snow etc, particularly variable or gusty wind.

There is also- particularly at stations 7 low house and 8 low house- that the birds are going in a direct line very close to directly away from you (7) and dam close (8 low).

There is a reason why anti-aircraft gunners on ships and gunners on bombers were run through training using skeet. You have to be able to judge how to and by how much to lead the target with your weapon to hit it. Essentially how to do the ballistics and react to changes dam quick to get your shot to arrive where the target is GOING TO BE in the time it takes the shot to travel the distance it will take to get to whre the target is GOING TO BE.

You also get to have to do this working out the ballistics and geometry of the things involved (shot, target) and allowing other things like wind and the dammed target doing odd things IN YOUR HEAD based on experience with not a lot of time to actually think about it. And you have to correct on the fly if ANYTHING changes including your reaction speed.

I really love Low House 8. 1 1/8oz load of #9 shot, about 45º angle or a bit lower and off to the port side. Smoke. Just a roil of finely pulverized clay when you catch the pigeon centered in the full pattern.
And, yes, you "can" shoot it earlier (though you really don't want to shoot so soon as to be hitting ANY part of the "low house"), it is just that if you shoot- and hit- but don't actually smash the pigeon to dust before it travels about 3/4 of the distance before it gets to the crossing point "outside" of where you are at station 8, you may find yourself getting hit with chunks of really fast moving broken bird.

Lord Skimper wrote:One could always just forego the LAC and just make Frigates. One frigate is worth two or three LAC. Many can be carried by large modular freighters dropped at the edge of a system and then hyper their own way in. A rendezvous can be set outside the system. Everyone hyperspaces there and boards the freighter and then off they go. Heck the CLAC wouldn't even need go into the system. Deploying the Frigates out of the system at the rendezvous point or even in hyperspace.

A Nat Turner has twin Grasers and more missiles than a Ferret. Better PD and CM. Can use hyperspace and while bottle space is limited carrying it most of the way, deploying in hyperspace and retrieving in hyperspace, would limit its fuel usages.

The biggest problem with the LAC is its lack of transport should the CLAC be destroyed. Not a Nat Turner problem. The power needs of the shrike makes it unable to use both bucklers, while a Nat Turner with bottle doesn't suffer this problem.

LAC are Lacking. Time to replace them.

I love the idea myself but RFC did a very long post once long before I joined the forum explaining why Frigates will not be making a comeback in any first-line navy.

[url]
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/289/1[/url]

is the link to what he said.

Roguevictory wrote:I love the idea myself but RFC did a very long post once long before I joined the forum explaining why Frigates will not be making a comeback in any first-line navy.

[url]
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/289/1[/url]

is the link to what he said.

Please don't feed the skimper.

Oh, and don't bother linking him to anything anyone - especially RFC - has said. He just ignores it.

Which is one of many reason why several here put him on ignore.

Roguevictory wrote:
I love the idea myself but RFC did a very long post once long before I joined the forum explaining why Frigates will not be making a comeback in any first-line navy.

[url]
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/289/1[/url]

is the link to what he said.

As Maxx has said, most of us don't listen to skimper because he does not listen to us, common sense, or the author. He is proud of the fact that he is "a philosopher" and feels like that gives him the power to make up anything he wants to, unconstrained by pesky little things like facts, rationality, or God on high coming down to tell him he is wrong and the Honorverse does not work that way.

As a side note, what is with your thing with frigates? The Honorverse navy's define a frigate as "the smallest vessel that can carry both a hyperdrive and some weapons." If you upsize it beyond that, it becomes an anemic destroyer. In order to make it useful for anything other than picking on merchies, a ship has to be a destroyer in order to fit in everything it needs. Pretty soon it will need to be the size of an old cruiser.

From what you have said it appears you are in love with the title "frigate," and not the class itself. If that is the case, just go through the books with some white out and a pen and change every mention of DD to FF and destroyer to frigate. Or, actually with any class you want. If the title is all you want, it shouldn't matter what it is attached to. Everything a FF could do, a DD can do better. Better sensers and more drone storage for recon, better and more missiles for attack, and better missile defense for both survival and working with the wall of battle.

Hi Drothgery,

Quite right, the RMN old to current CLAC's are at 6 MT are DN sized, and carry according to the textev anywhere from 96-112 LAC's in 8-9 squadrons and ~4+ spares; with the GSN CLAC's built later are around 8.5 MT with a much larger wing; while the RHN CLAC's being larger still with ~200-228 LAC's, despite their larger sizes, largely due to they're essentially near-single sortie type designs, with far less munitions for sustained operations.

All have no armor, and can be built much faster [>50 weeks?] and cheaper than an SD/DN.

For a SL SDF who's paid attention to the Haven Quadrant, it could mean a number of CLAC's are much quicker to build and in lieu of MDM's quite capable of taking control of a neighbor's space etc at relatively little cost or crew exposure, though who knows if RFC will explore that?

Given the commercial aspects of the CLAC, we may see CLAC's built before other types of hyper warships in Grayson and the SEM, and fairly large ones at that before the two types RFC has posted are constructed.

We may soon see joint GA CLAC squadrons composed of both RMN/GSN and RHN CLAC's because of the greater numbers of the RHN; with the RMN/GSN reserved for missile defense while the RHN are the offensive types [the Alpha and Beta etc 'birds'].

L

drothgery wrote:

MAD-4A wrote:Also “see-lack” for me. I was thinking maybe light CLACs, BB/Nike II size with reduced wings but cheaper & higher accel, for raiding.

The thing is that you pretty much need to get to DN-size for a useful number of LACs.

lyonheart wrote:For a SL SDF who's paid attention to the Haven Quadrant, it could mean a number of CLAC's are much quicker to build and in lieu of MDM's quite capable of taking control of a neighbor's space etc at relatively little cost or crew exposure, though who knows if RFC will explore that?

We may. But even if the CLAC itself doesn't require any breakthroughs to design presumably the League needs some LAC tech breakthroughs to make them worth carrying around.

I guess you could build an useful anti-missile screening LAC with 1900-era LAC tech, but it'd be more sluggish than your wallers

Every LAC we've gotten specs on (from HoS, SITS, or Jaynes) prior to the Series 282s that Honor took to Silesia had an acceleration of almost exactly 409g. That's some of the lowest accel warships we've seen, with only the four heaviest SD classes being marginally slower. And based on their mass a Scientist-class should be good for more like 420g.

Though given how outclassed a SLN wall is in accel I guess a wall of them with screening LACs giving up 10 more Gs isn't the end of the world; but it isn't great.


Using LACs for any more than that would, I think, require node design breakthroughs; not to mention (at least) many of the other LAC tech advances Haven made with the 1st-gen Cimeterres. And those were pretty much just there to blunt raids by Shrikes and Ferrets; not exactly the primary worry of the League.

kuh-lack.

This may not be "correct" but I will be damned if I call em something else at this point.