?

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:And the 3-second firing graser heads from a much smaller missile than what was used at Oyster Bay was developed w/o benefit of the mini Manty powerplant. And it killed SDs at Galton. No?

Are you really planning on a suicide LAC, by putting a 3 second graser in it? Isn't it already dangerous enough trying to kill an SD with a LAC?

penny wrote:What sort of stealth did Shuttlecock employ? The GA didn't see them coming until it was too late. And the 3-second firing graser heads from a much smaller missile than what was used at Oyster Bay was developed w/o benefit of the mini Manty powerplant. And it killed SDs at Galton. No?

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:What sort of stealth did Shuttlecock employ? The GA didn't see them coming until it was too late. And the 3-second firing graser heads from a much smaller missile than what was used at Oyster Bay was developed w/o benefit of the mini Manty powerplant. And it killed SDs at Galton. No?

it used low power recon drive wedges at very long ranged plus a very long ballistic coast phase (fast enough to have a detectable bow wake from all the high speed collisions with solar wind and the line)

And yeas, at missile warhead range the graser could kill SDs. At that range so can laserheads, you just need more of them. But those are also far, far, weaker than the graser a Shrike already carries.

So, sure , if you got 100+ Shrikes within 50.000 km of an SD they’d kill it even quicker than a few hundred laserheads - but good freaking luck getting them there. Well, other than as the survivors of a several thousand strong stoke wave (a la the death ride of Home Fleet’s LAC at the BoM)
But at normal energy ranges, 10x further than laserhead range an SD is designed to stand up, for a while, to the broadsides of a couple dozen SD grade grasers.

penny wrote:And the 3-second firing graser heads from a much smaller missile than what was used at Oyster Bay was developed w/o benefit of the mini Manty powerplant. And it killed SDs at Galton. No?

tlb wrote:Are you really planning on a suicide LAC, by putting a 3 second graser in it? Isn't it already dangerous enough trying to kill an SD with a LAC?

penny wrote:It worked for the RMN w/o benefit of a stealthy approach.

Chapter 28 wrote:Even if there had been, no one could build a graser that small and that powerful which could survive the power bleed and waste heat of actually firing. But that was fine with the MAN's designers and tacticians. In fact, they were just as happy every graser torpedo would irrevocably and totally destroy itself in the moment it fired, since they weren't looking forward to the day one of their enemies finally captured one intact and figured out how to duplicate it.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:And the 3-second firing graser heads from a much smaller missile than what was used at Oyster Bay was developed w/o benefit of the mini Manty powerplant. And it killed SDs at Galton. No?

tlb wrote:Are you really planning on a suicide LAC, by putting a 3 second graser in it? Isn't it already dangerous enough trying to kill an SD with a LAC?

penny wrote:It worked for the RMN w/o benefit of a stealthy approach.

The RMN had great success with the new LAC against capital ships when they were first introduced. The PRH Navy did not know to respect them and ships were caught in orbit with wedges down. But after both sides had LAC's in quantity and ships learned how to defend against them, the usage has changed; now they are not sent after enemy ships, but are used to thicken the missile defense - since the modern missile storm is even more dangerous.

I believe the 3 second graser only has the single mode of operation. But even if it can be used repeatedly with short shots, it is wasteful to make it the main weapon of a LAC. It is better for tactics and morale, if your best crews can return. Therefore I would suggest having several graser torpedoes carried on hard points for this design and the main battery being a normal graser or xray laser.

KZT has stated several times that mini-fusion reactor can only be used on an unmanned missile, because of lethal radiation. What this LAC really needs is the magical fission reactor from a Manticoran LAC.*

penny wrote:I thought the mini Manty fission reactor is what I was discussing. And that tech is the same secret the Inner Onion has stated it 'was' close to breaking.

What is your reasoning the MA cannot have several LAC designs like the RMN?

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:I thought the mini Manty fission reactor is what I was discussing. And that tech is the same secret the Inner Onion has stated it 'was' close to breaking.

What is your reasoning the MA cannot have several LAC designs like the RMN?

The RMN mini-reactor is the fusion design that goes into their newest missiles. The fission reactors are not mini. So I expected you were talking fusion, whenever you talked about a mini design.

I never said that the Malign could not have multiple LAC classes, I only said it is bad tactics and bad for morale to create a LAC that blows up when it achieves a favorable attack. So it would be better to have that 3 second graser in torpedoes carried on hard mounts instead, that way successful crews would live to fight some more.

penny wrote:I didn't think the MA knows about the mini fusion reactor. Do they?

Now I am unsure about which secret the MA says it is close to breaking. Which is obviously the design they think will be critical (pardon the intended pun) for advancing their tech.

My badd. I never meant to imply that such a LAC would destroy itself if fired for the full 3-seconds, rather than simply destroying/disabling the graser. And if it is an unmanned LAC, then it is a moot point.

BTW, I thought Grayson's mini fission powerplant technology is what powers RMN tech, like Ghost rider and ECM. I missed another memo?

Chapter 56 wrote:"But if it isn't, then the Manties are building much smaller long-range missiles than they were. That means they have to've found a better solution than simply using bigger and better superconductor rings. If they're going to cram two—or even three, according to some rumors—complete drive packages into missiles the size of the ones they're supposed to be deploying, they can't have the internal volume to use straight superconductor storage to power the damned things."

"I imagine not," Hegedusic agreed. "But could anybody really build a fusion plant that small?"

"It's theoretically possible. With a powerful enough grav field to do the pinching, it could be done. But the initial power would have to come from a source external to the missile, which would probably mean some tricky modification of the launchers, as well. Anyway," he shook his head, brushing away the speculation, "the point I was going to make is that they have an effectively unlimited powered attack range. They could fire the damned things from five or six light-hours out, accelerate the bastards up to speed, and then program the second stage drive not to kick in until the birds entered attack range of their targets. If they didn't punch the max velocity too high, they wouldn't suffer significant -particle-erosion degradation of their onboard sensor systems during even a very long ballistic flight component."

Chapter 7 wrote:"Essentially, Your Grace," Givens said, "the Andies were estimating the number they'd need if push came to shove between us on the basis that at least half our available strength would be required closer to home to keep an eye on Haven. They projected a total build of roughly a hundred and thirty SD(P)s, but they have only forty-two currently in commission. The other ninety are all under construction at various states of completion. Some of them won't be completed for at least another eighteen months."

"And even the ones they've completed are going to require fairly substantial refits before we can make best use of them," Hamish put in. Elizabeth cocked her head at him, and he shrugged. "Their multi-drive missiles are considerably cruder than ours. In fact, they're less sophisticated than the ones Haven is currently deploying. They're almost as big as Havenite three-drive missiles, but they incorporate only two drives. Tactically, they're a lot more like the Mark 16s we're deploying aboard the new Saganami-Cs. They've got heavier warheads than the Mark 16, but their range is very similar. And because they're capacitor-fed, without the Mark 16's fusion plant, their EW is less effective. They simply can't match our birds' power budgets. And while their pods are bigger than ours are, they actually carry fewer birds than the Republic's currently do, which means their salvo density is thinner than ours, as well.

"We've put BuWeaps and BuShips on to the problem, and Admiral Hemphill and Vice Admiral Toscarelli have come up with a minimum-modification solution. They can't operate the new fusion-powered MDMs from their pods, but we can load their launcher cells with our own older-style, capacitor-fed three-stage missiles. It won't give them any greater salvo density, and the EW will still be less capable, but it will significantly improve their range. It's going to require some modifications to their pods, which they're going to be making at their end, but that part of the process should be completed within the next sixty days. After that, it's just a case of their building the new pods.

"The longer-range fix is to modify their existing SD(P)s to accept the Keyhole platforms and fire our new 'flat-pack' pods with the all-up fusion-powered birds. That's going to take considerably longer, because each ship will have to spend an absolute minimum of ninety days in yard hands to carry out the modifications. Toscarelli's people have just about completed the blueprints for the necessary alterations, and they've been working with the Andies' architects to provide a fix which can be incorporated into the ships still under construction. At best, though, that's going to impose an additional delay on those units' completion."

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:I didn't think the MA knows about the mini fusion reactor. Do they?

Now I am unsure about which secret the MA says it is close to breaking. Which is obviously the design they think will be critical (pardon the intended pun) for advancing their tech.

My badd. I never meant to imply that such a LAC would destroy itself if fired for the full 3-seconds, rather than simply destroying/disabling the graser. And if it is an unmanned LAC, then it is a moot point.

BTW, I thought Grayson's mini fission powerplant technology is what powers RMN tech, like Ghost rider and ECM. I missed another memo?

I expect the Malign knows about it, because the first text is speculation by a weapons consultant to Monica (which involved the Malign) in Shadow of Saganami:

Chapter 56 wrote:"But if it isn't, then the Manties are building much smaller long-range missiles than they were. That means they have to've found a better solution than simply using bigger and better superconductor rings. If they're going to cram two—or even three, according to some rumors—complete drive packages into missiles the size of the ones they're supposed to be deploying, they can't have the internal volume to use straight superconductor storage to power the damned things."

"I imagine not," Hegedusic agreed. "But could anybody really build a fusion plant that small?"

"It's theoretically possible. With a powerful enough grav field to do the pinching, it could be done. But the initial power would have to come from a source external to the missile, which would probably mean some tricky modification of the launchers, as well. Anyway," he shook his head, brushing away the speculation, "the point I was going to make is that they have an effectively unlimited powered attack range. They could fire the damned things from five or six light-hours out, accelerate the bastards up to speed, and then program the second stage drive not to kick in until the birds entered attack range of their targets. If they didn't punch the max velocity too high, they wouldn't suffer significant -particle-erosion degradation of their onboard sensor systems during even a very long ballistic flight component."

The next text is a discussion in the Manticoran Admiralty, from At All Costs:

Chapter 7 wrote:"Essentially, Your Grace," Givens said, "the Andies were estimating the number they'd need if push came to shove between us on the basis that at least half our available strength would be required closer to home to keep an eye on Haven. They projected a total build of roughly a hundred and thirty SD(P)s, but they have only forty-two currently in commission. The other ninety are all under construction at various states of completion. Some of them won't be completed for at least another eighteen months."

"And even the ones they've completed are going to require fairly substantial refits before we can make best use of them," Hamish put in. Elizabeth cocked her head at him, and he shrugged. "Their multi-drive missiles are considerably cruder than ours. In fact, they're less sophisticated than the ones Haven is currently deploying. They're almost as big as Havenite three-drive missiles, but they incorporate only two drives. Tactically, they're a lot more like the Mark 16s we're deploying aboard the new Saganami-Cs. They've got heavier warheads than the Mark 16, but their range is very similar. And because they're capacitor-fed, without the Mark 16's fusion plant, their EW is less effective. They simply can't match our birds' power budgets. And while their pods are bigger than ours are, they actually carry fewer birds than the Republic's currently do, which means their salvo density is thinner than ours, as well.

"We've put BuWeaps and BuShips on to the problem, and Admiral Hemphill and Vice Admiral Toscarelli have come up with a minimum-modification solution. They can't operate the new fusion-powered MDMs from their pods, but we can load their launcher cells with our own older-style, capacitor-fed three-stage missiles. It won't give them any greater salvo density, and the EW will still be less capable, but it will significantly improve their range. It's going to require some modifications to their pods, which they're going to be making at their end, but that part of the process should be completed within the next sixty days. After that, it's just a case of their building the new pods.

"The longer-range fix is to modify their existing SD(P)s to accept the Keyhole platforms and fire our new 'flat-pack' pods with the all-up fusion-powered birds. That's going to take considerably longer, because each ship will have to spend an absolute minimum of ninety days in yard hands to carry out the modifications. Toscarelli's people have just about completed the blueprints for the necessary alterations, and they've been working with the Andies' architects to provide a fix which can be incorporated into the ships still under construction. At best, though, that's going to impose an additional delay on those units' completion."

PS: It is not about you implying that a LAC would destroy itself if the graser fired for the full 3 seconds; it is simply that the 3 second graser explodes when fired, destroying the vehicle that holds it.

We will have to see what an "unmanned LAC" will encompass, because RFC has been against unmanned ships before now. My guess is a remote control missile defense platform.

penny wrote:I don't even know where to look even if I had searchable text.

I don't think it should be a problem to develop a graser mount that won't destroy the LAC if it blows. No more than I think a Manticoran LAC would be destroyed if its graser mount is glanced and destroyed with an energy weapon.