How do spider drive SD(P)'s fight?

n7axw wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Spider Drives can navigate in Hyper and probably have streak-drive hyper generators as well, so they cannot be using the Alpha wall for traction once they go higher than the alpha band. Logically, they use the next higher wall the same way that FTL comms do.

Your logic is impeccable, sir. Unfortunately logic can be a way of being wrong with confidence...which is just my smart-arsed way of saying that I wish we had a bit more textev or evidence on how this works...

Don

The question is, "How else might they work?"

I prefer not to get ulcers from over-thinking things when the answer is so obvious.

Weird Harold wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:But do you think the stealth is a nice extra for the LD's - enjoy it while you can, with Oyster Bay just making the most of a new technology before anyone can counter it - with plans for them that do not revolve around it once it does get countered, or is the entire class something that the MAN expects to retire in a few years once the counter is available?

I dont expect the Lenny Dets to be retired as soon as their stealth advantage is whittled away any more than the Shrike LAC was retired when the RHN developed a counter for them.

I do expect the Lenny Dets to be able to stand toe-to-toe with an equivalent number of conventional pod-layers for about as long as Manticore held a monopoly on the pod-layer concept.

Your second paragraph is intriguing. By conventional pod layer, are you refering to the Invictus class prior to Apollo? To the Invictus with keyhole 2 and Apollo? To Havenite designs or the Medusas?

Are you assuming that the Lenny Dets will be competitive after the allies resolve the stealth issue?

Don

n7axw wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:I do expect the Lenny Dets to be able to stand toe-to-toe with an equivalent number of conventional pod-layers for about as long as Manticore held a monopoly on the pod-layer concept.

Your second paragraph is intriguing. By conventional pod layer, are you refering to ...

I mean whatever is in current deployment by the Lenny Det's opposition. Yes, that includes Apollo because the current iteration of Apollo won't be able to track a spider drive without a wedge any better than any other conventional missile. It's going to take a specialized seeker-head to target a spider drive, and that isn't necessarily the same as being able to detect the presence of a spider drive.

n7axw wrote:Are you assuming that the Lenny Dets will be competitive after the allies resolve the stealth issue?

I'm assuming they will be competitive until someone develops a new targeting sensor that can be installed in a missile so that the Lenny Det can be hit with a missile reliably.

I expect that energy weapons will be needed when the stealth issue is cracked because even after being detected, Lenny Dets (or any spider drive ship) are going to be a tough target.

Weird Harold wrote:
I mean whatever is in current deployment by the Lenny Det's opposition. Yes, that includes Apollo because the current iteration of Apollo won't be able to track a spider drive without a wedge any better than any other conventional missile. It's going to take a specialized seeker-head to target a spider drive, and that isn't necessarily the same as being able to detect the presence of a spider drive.



I'm assuming they will be competitive until someone develops a new targeting sensor that can be installed in a missile so that the Lenny Det can be hit with a missile reliably.

I expect that energy weapons will be needed when the stealth issue is cracked because even after being detected, Lenny Dets (or any spider drive ship) are going to be a tough target.

I think that missiles must have some kind of active sensor (among other), which should have no problem tracking a Lenny Det, if it is close enough. Otherwise conventional ships could evade missiles by switching of their wedge.

Possibly semi-heretical, duck the noodles question:

We know that the LennyDets are capital ships, but do we know that they are spider drive? AKA are the sharks the assasin ships and the LD's more standard system-invasion forces that are supposed to be close to but not quite at the level of Haven sector tech? One reading of the Detweiler's logic seems to be that they can't afford to lose the crews of the Sharks with a second attempted Oyster Bay, as that's their training cadre.

I wonder if maybe the original MAlign plan (Oyster Harbor?) might have been "the Sharks attack and then the Lenny Dets jump the remaing RMN ships to take the high orbitals in Manticore" all in one operation. Thoughts?

Torlek wrote:I think that missiles must have some kind of active sensor (among other), which should have no problem tracking a Lenny Det, if it is close enough. Otherwise conventional ships could evade missiles by switching of their wedge.

I'm sure missile seekers do have some sort of active seeker, but it would be short range, terminal guidance with light-speed sensors.

Impeller drive starships can disappear from long range sensors by shutting down their wedge -- but they can't maneuver if they do. Spider Drive ships can maneuver without any betrayal to gravitic (FTL) sensors.

Also, like conventional warships, the Lenny Dets probably have active countermeasures to spoof and reduce enemy missile effectiveness. Something in addition to the see-through stealth system which will require some tech breakthrough to counter.

Even when the Spider Drive Detector-inator (tm) is perfected and the See-Through Exposer-inator (tm) is fitted to every missile and energy mount, the Lenny Dets are going to be tough targets because they must rely on heavy active defenses because they have no wedge and can't maneuver in a bubble sidewall.

SharkHunter wrote:One reading of the Detweiler's logic seems to be that they can't afford to lose the crews of the Sharks with a second attempted Oyster Bay, as that's their training cadre.

It would be rather silly to worry about preserving spider/ghost specialists as training cadre if they weren't needed to train others on spider/ghost technology, wouldn't it?

If the Lenny Dets were conventional warships, training cadre could be drawn in job lots from Mesa Alignment Navy units in the Renaissance Factor.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the response of an LD to being shot at would be to raise its wedge and side walls

There's no reason to assume that ships this big aren't big enough to be dual drive, particularly if the conclusion that Warshawski sails are essential to safe navigation in hyper is correct. While a sail-only node probably would be smaller than a standard alpha node, the difference may not be great, and building in the configuration mechanism anyway is a good idea. For that matter, the Sharks could well have alpha nodes - they can clearly move independently in hyper - which suggests the possibility that the Ghosts _are_ too small to have the space for them, since it seems that they can't.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Without doing a lot of detailed search and working from memory...

The Lenny Dets (and all spider drive warships) devote far more mass to armor than impeller drive warships -- all three sides have to be armored as opposed to an impeller warship's two sides. Invisibility to gravitic sensors and "See Through" stealth systems make the very hard for current systems to target -- even their own weapons systems.

The Lenny Dets are apparently pod layers and currently use pods of Cataphract-C missiles. One advantage of pod-layers is the ability to upgrade missiles without extensive modifications.

The Lenny Dets are also supposedly able to launch spider drive grazer torpedoes from internal tubes (or possibly as a single-torp pod equivalent?) That implies a huge ship as the spider drive graser torpedo is described as huge -- nearly LAC size?

I would guess that Lenny Dets rely on active defenses beyond their heavy armor -- lots of PDLC and CM capacity, possibly equal to their offensive load-out. A bubble sidewall might be fine for a parking orbit, but would be virtually useless in a running battle.

Again, this appears to be a case of "we can't see them, so nobody can see them", which is not an assumption I'd like to be making about my theoretically invisible ships, or I'm going to get surprised some day, whe Oops, turns out the Manties have this new detector that makes the Lenny Det stand out ike a sore thumb, and the first you know about it is when they blow away your entire fleet of Lenny Dets as well as your pet Sharks.

Louis R wrote:It wouldn't surprise me at all if the response of an LD to being shot at would be to raise its wedge and side walls

There's no reason to assume that ships this big aren't big enough to be dual drive, particularly if the conclusion that Warshawski sails are essential to safe navigation in hyper is correct. While a sail-only node probably would be smaller than a standard alpha node, the difference may not be great, and building in the configuration mechanism anyway is a good idea. For that matter, the Sharks could well have alpha nodes - they can clearly move independently in hyper - which suggests the possibility that the Ghosts _are_ too small to have the space for them, since it seems that they can't.

On the one hand, if they are to be independently capable of hyperspace travel, the LD's have to be able to operate the spider drive in hyper at a minimum, and while you could theoretically deploy them most places without sails enabling you to use grav waves and wormholes (they did it before Warshawski, after all), it'd be awfully clunky, even with streak drives. (And someone has posted some recollection of them stated as being able to transit wormholes. It'd be potentially terribly hard to deploy out of Darius otherwise.)

On the other, sails are generated as a modification of an impeller wedge, and the spider drive doesn't suggest some modification of its wall-grabbing tractor beams as a way to produce a sail or a sail-equivalent.

Impeller drive ships (and LAC's, pinnaces and missiles) are built as long cylinders for the sake of the best use of the impeller drive. Spider drive ships are trilateral, like smooshed caltrops. And the armoring scheme described does not suggest at all that they've got a wedge they can can turn on in case things get bad.

So - they almost can't be built to have wedges, but without wedges, it's almost impossible to suppose they can have sails, and it's almost impossible to suppose they don't have sails. Something's got to give.

SharkHunter wrote:Possibly semi-heretical, duck the noodles question:

We know that the LennyDets are capital ships, but do we know that they are spider drive? AKA are the sharks the assasin ships and the LD's more standard system-invasion forces that are supposed to be close to but not quite at the level of Haven sector tech? One reading of the Detweiler's logic seems to be that they can't afford to lose the crews of the Sharks with a second attempted Oyster Bay, as that's their training cadre.

I wonder if maybe the original MAlign plan (Oyster Harbor?) might have been "the Sharks attack and then the Lenny Dets jump the remaing RMN ships to take the high orbitals in Manticore" all in one operation. Thoughts?

As I recall, the text says that the Sharks were not intended to actually be used in combat. They were designed strictly as training vessels and testbeds for the Detweilers. They were not intended to be used in Oyster Bay.