Relax, thanks for digging out and including DW's post from the archives! It is very informative. It appears that the author may have once lost a love interest to some navy man who was affiliated with a Frigate. (I'll deny the remark!)
Anyway, I was envisioning the hot-swapping to be fully automated without needing a support ship. I don't think it would be worth it if it needed a separate ship. It should be fully automated, if not, it should be considered a wash. Of course, it would still leave answering the question of where to leave it after ejecting it. Perhaps somewhere near the hyper limit? Where a rendezvous could collect it like a life pod and reinstall it very quickly. Much much faster than the 6hrs someone posited. Hot-swappable components are generally designed to be accomplished without additional support.
Theemile made an interesting post. I'll snip the appropriate part ...
Theemile wrote:Actually, there was a CL (P)... "ish"....
The Liberty class was a class of 12 75kTon CLs built in Silesia for a group of liberation fronts (Notably the Libau Independance Force) (LIF)) They started Life as a Courier design and had dozens of bolt on Box Launchers from LACs bolted on the Hull. The Box Launchers are usually 6-12 missile cells with mechanical or chemical launchers giving a 1 shot missile capability. Box launchers are evolutionarily on the same family as Pods, but were powered from the mother ship.
This design, allowed a cheap military refit on a large courier design and gave the liberation fronts a quick, cheap Weapons platform, without long term combat capability.
Each broadside had 12, 6 missile boxes, and just had enough firecontrol to control 12 missiles in a salvo. So these light refits could fire huge salvos for a CL, but had no staying power in a fight.
For years I've been thinking about bolt-on missiles but decided it wouldn't work. I envisioned missiles bolted onto just about every area of a ship, but designed to be blown away after use. So even if they covered launch tubes, it would only be temporary. But these add-ons would make a ship look like it had large boils all over its body. I envisioned this way back when pods were first introduced. BTW, do bolt-on missiles cut into accel as does external pods?
Also, although the idea seems to be a wash, I considered a rotary type launcher replacement pod system deployed on the Frigate. As used by the LACs.
At any rate, a redesigned Frigate with a hot swappable hyper generator, masses of blow away external missiles and also towing pods should conspire to make it formidable. Also, support bases for such Frigates could be deployed in friendly systems, like Trevor's Star and Beowulf. Oh well, another crazy idea bites the dust.