Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

penny wrote:It has been suggested that there might be a smaller spider ship in-between a Ghost and a Shark. More recently in another thread ThinksMarkedly suggested a ship the size of a CA.

I don’t see the MAN needing screening elements. But in a pinch the Ghosts, or some smaller spider ship in-between a Ghost and a Shark might screen for an LD to allow it to escape, maneuver, etc. Possible? All spider ships have the same acceleration. Right?* Unlike GA ships where the smaller ships have a higher accel.

Or am I incorrect that smaller spider ships will also manage the same 150g? Is the accel of a Shark vs the proposed accel of an LD the same?

Since a Ghost has no offensive armament, it could not be part of a screening element. We do not know its actual size, just that is is small. A warship for screening probably would be bigger (if such were needed).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:It has been suggested that there might be a smaller spider ship in-between a Ghost and a Shark. More recently in another thread ThinksMarkedly suggested a ship the size of a CA.

I don’t see the MAN needing screening elements. But in a pinch the Ghost’s, or some smaller spider ship in-between a Ghost and a Shark might screen for an LD to allow it to escape, maneuver, etc. Possible? All spider ships have the same acceleration. Right?* Unlike GA ships where the smaller ships have a higher accel.

Or am I incorrect that smaller spider ships will also manage the same 150g? Is the accel of a Shark vs the proposed accel of an LD the same?

No, acceleration depends on the size of the ship to mount the spider tractors on. So bigger ships have higher maximum acceleration, in theory. The squishy human beings on the inside put an upper limit on that, at 250 gravities.

We don't know what size of ship achieves that. I assume it's something below the size of a Shark, meaning a Shark-class and a Leonard Detweiler-class ship have the exact same acceleration and limitations.

But can a Ghost reach the 250? Can it reach even the 150 gravities that the grav plates can handle? We're told a torpedo cannot go above "a few hundred gravities" and a Ghost is bigger than a torpedo, so maybe the upper limit is reached at something the size of the torpedo and therefore all spider warships would have the same accelerations.

In any case, I wasn't talking about escort elements. A CA- or BC-sized spider ship could be an effective armed scout, carrying Ninurta pods to deploy against secondary or tertiary targets. Or mines.

Of course. I was simply wondering if it is a possible tactic in a pinch. The CA(S) should be carrying some sort of CMs I'd think.

tlb wrote:Since a Ghost has no offensive armament, it could not be part of a screening element. We do not know its actual size, just that is is small. A warship for screening probably would be bigger (if such were needed).

I suggested long ago that a Ghost might also screen for an LD by sacrificing itself. If an avalanche of missiles are incoming towards an LD, a Ghost in the vicinity might be able to drop its stealth or flutter its stealth to draw the missile fire.

penny wrote:I suggested long ago that a Ghost might also screen for an LD by sacrificing itself. If an avalanche of missiles are incoming towards an LD, a Ghost in the vicinity might be able to drop its stealth or flutter its stealth to draw the missile fire.

If the missiles are targeted, instead of just flying around and searching for... erm... let's call them sensor ghosts... then the Ghost sacrifice might not help much. Yes, it is the job of escorts to sacrifice themselves so the bigger ships don't get hit, but if the missiles know there's a bigger ship out there, they won't be too fooled, especially not Apollos under a CIC's control.

penny wrote:I suggested long ago that a Ghost might also screen for an LD by sacrificing itself. If an avalanche of missiles are incoming towards an LD, a Ghost in the vicinity might be able to drop its stealth or flutter its stealth to draw the missile fire.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If the missiles are targeted, instead of just flying around and searching for... erm... let's call them sensor ghosts... then the Ghost sacrifice might not help much. Yes, it is the job of escorts to sacrifice themselves so the bigger ships don't get hit, but if the missiles know there's a bigger ship out there, they won't be too fooled, especially not Apollos under a CIC's control.

In any case, why wouldn't they create a screening ship with serious anti-missile capabilities; instead of using something that can only prove useful by dying?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:I suggested long ago that a Ghost might also screen for an LD by sacrificing itself. If an avalanche of missiles are incoming towards an LD, a Ghost in the vicinity might be able to drop its stealth or flutter its stealth to draw the missile fire.

If the missiles are targeted, instead of just flying around and searching for... erm... let's call them sensor ghosts... then the Ghost sacrifice might not help much. Yes, it is the job of escorts to sacrifice themselves so the bigger ships don't get hit, but if the missiles know there's a bigger ship out there, they won't be too fooled, especially not Apollos under a CIC's control.

If the launch is an avalanche, they are simply searching. Pretty much the shot in the dark you suggested once upon a time in the HV.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:I suggested long ago that a Ghost might also screen for an LD by sacrificing itself. If an avalanche of missiles are incoming towards an LD, a Ghost in the vicinity might be able to drop its stealth or flutter its stealth to draw the missile fire.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If the missiles are targeted, instead of just flying around and searching for... erm... let's call them sensor ghosts... then the Ghost sacrifice might not help much. Yes, it is the job of escorts to sacrifice themselves so the bigger ships don't get hit, but if the missiles know there's a bigger ship out there, they won't be too fooled, especially not Apollos under a CIC's control.

In any case, why wouldn't they create a screening ship with serious anti-missile capabilities; instead of using something that can only prove useful by dying?

Indeed. The CA(S) could be configured with CM pods as an option. Consider the CM ship I suggested for GA ships that didn't go over so well. Are you suggesting that it is feasible for the MAN?

penny wrote:I suggested long ago that a Ghost might also screen for an LD by sacrificing itself. If an avalanche of missiles are incoming towards an LD, a Ghost in the vicinity might be able to drop its stealth or flutter its stealth to draw the missile fire.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If the missiles are targeted, instead of just flying around and searching for... erm... let's call them sensor ghosts... then the Ghost sacrifice might not help much. Yes, it is the job of escorts to sacrifice themselves so the bigger ships don't get hit, but if the missiles know there's a bigger ship out there, they won't be too fooled, especially not Apollos under a CIC's control.

tlb wrote:In any case, why wouldn't they create a screening ship with serious anti-missile capabilities; instead of using something that can only prove useful by dying?

penny wrote:Indeed. The CA(S) could be configured with CM pods as an option. Consider the CM ship I suggested for GA ships that didn't go over so well. Are you suggesting that it is feasible for the MAN?

I have no idea, I leave most ship design to the author. In the past when all CM activity was within a light second of the ship, then the limiting factor was control links. TEiF gave me the impression that CM activity would need to reach out further, to counteract the terminal velocities of multi-drive missiles. I have no idea what the author will do; but using Apollo as a model, suggests a CM control missile with FTL communication to the ship and a multi-drive engine. This control missile would carry a pod's worth of CM's out to attack range and then provide the control links after they were released. Did you also suggest this?

However it would not be useful to defend spider drive ships with wedge driven missiles or CM's, since their track points right back to the ship. And the urgency of missile defense means you cannot heave something out for a delayed ignition.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:It has been suggested that there might be a smaller spider ship in-between a Ghost and a Shark. More recently in another thread ThinksMarkedly suggested a ship the size of a CA.

I don’t see the MAN needing screening elements. But in a pinch the Ghost’s, or some smaller spider ship in-between a Ghost and a Shark might screen for an LD to allow it to escape, maneuver, etc. Possible? All spider ships have the same acceleration. Right?* Unlike GA ships where the smaller ships have a higher accel.

Or am I incorrect that smaller spider ships will also manage the same 150g? Is the accel of a Shark vs the proposed accel of an LD the same?

No, acceleration depends on the size of the ship to mount the spider tractors on. So bigger ships have higher maximum acceleration, in theory. The squishy human beings on the inside put an upper limit on that, at 250 gravities.

We don't know what size of ship achieves that. I assume it's something below the size of a Shark, meaning a Shark-class and a Leonard Detweiler-class ship have the exact same acceleration and limitations.

But can a Ghost reach the 250? Can it reach even the 150 gravities that the grav plates can handle? We're told a torpedo cannot go above "a few hundred gravities" and a Ghost is bigger than a torpedo, so maybe the upper limit is reached at something the size of the torpedo and therefore all spider warships would have the same accelerations.

It's true the the number of emitters you can fit affect the drive's peak acceleration. And while never stated explicitly ship mass may have some effect as well (take two spider ships with the same size and power of emitters and if one is double the mass it likely has lower peak drive acceleration).

But for ships that seems largely irrelevant. Even something as small as a graser torpedo, the one place it is mentioned that a smaller drive limits acceleration, is still capable of "a few hundred gravities’ acceleration" [MoH].

And while MoH simply says of ships "smaller spider-drive ships had no acceleration advantage over larger ones." And "the maximum survivable normal-space acceleration for a spider drive-equipped ship was limited by the ability of currently available grav plate technology to offset the consequences of acceleration" [MoH]. Note it isn't specifically talking about Sharks here; just spider ships in general (and the infodump concludes by saying all this is how the strike forces [Sharks] and scouting forces [Ghosts] were able to "able to prowl undetected about both components of the Manticore Binary System for over two months" [MoH]


So, I am firmly of the belief that any spider ship, even one as small as "the roughly frigate-sized Ghost-class scout" [SftS] has a drive more than capable[1] of maxing out the internal grav plates.

Meaning I'm sure a Ghost can manage the same 150 g normal (210 g combat [4g experienced] & 310 g briefly for emergencies [9g experienced]) accelerations as a Shark or an LD.


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[1] I say "more than capable" because I assume some level of oversizing of the drive for redundancy. That'd permit the ship to still pull its full survivable accel even with some percentage of its individual spider emitters damaged or destroyed.