What happens to all that debris?

Loren Pechtel wrote:And how are you packing them like sardines? You have something that can place them like that without disturbing the ships nearby?? Your reaction jets are going to toss the nearby ships around.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But back to your defence question... it's possible that Ganymede only had Trebuchets, not anything newer. The Cataphract was based on a Javelin coupled with a CM body because doing the same to a Trebuchet would make it too big to be launched from tubes. So if Ganymede only had Trebuchets, they were even less capable than Javelins. And that's assuming that NSG got the latest for their magazines, which is not a given.

Jonathan_S wrote:And I'd assumed that Ganymede Station's launch on Honor would have been from pods of Cataphract-As (though I guess any missile tubes on the station, or the fleet units nearby would also have been launching -Bs. But it only makes sense to give the station the pods it needs to launch the capital weight laserheads of the -As.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
By the way, the NSG launch was completely irrelevant for Honor. She was sitting at 3 light-minutes out from Jupiter, since she was outside its hyperlimit. The Cataphracts are DDMs with 225 s of total flight time, so their range about 1 light-minute. Those missiles needed to have a ballistic phase to cover about 2 light-minutes after only a single stage's acceleration (0.09c/min, so they're at 0.27c). That's over 7 minutes of ballistic phase. Honor had time to leave the flag bridge, get a cup of hot chocolate and let the barbarians in her staff get more coffee, then return, before ordering translation to alpha.

Jonathan_S wrote:But the defensive planners have consider the outcome should an enemy come into the effective range of the defenses; and they'd presumably want the heaviest warheads they could get. It'd be pretty annoying to them in Honor did stray into range and then the sidewall and armor of her wall largely shrugged off the cruiser-weight warheads of the Cataphract-Bs that could be launched from SD tubes. You want the missile pods to thicken the launch anyway, so go for pods of the -As so at least you get a full capital missile warhead; just in case you do manage some hits.

cthia wrote:I posed a question somewhere in this thread that has had me wondering ever since. Well, the response to said post has me wondering anyway, which I think came from Jonathan_S and backed up by an old related post of RFC's supplied by Duckk. Thanks, btw, Duckk. I originally missed that post for a few pages.

At any rate, when debris—specifically in the form of unspent missiles—head out of the system, can they be retrieved and reused? I think it is obvious that they can. I am asking because I can see the MA firing lots of g-torps that may not find a target. Which changes the statement the author made about there not being a lot of orphaned missiles, with the development of g-torps.*

According to that same informative post of the author's provided by Duckk (amongst the first few posts of the thread) in the case of impeller-driven missiles, they are provided with a self-destruct mechanism. Which I always thought is a waste, although I do understand the related security concerns as well as the other concerns laid out in DW's post. You certainly wouldn't want someone to happen upon an intact missile.

But g-torps are stealthy and have a much longer endurance. So shouldn't the MA be able to retrieve unspent g-torps that never find a target? They would know the bearing they fired them on. (Albeit perhaps less any course changes performed by the missile.) A stealthed ship can intercept/rendezvous with them later.

Or would it be a security risk that is just not worth it. I imagine they can go into booby trap mode. I feel sorry for any vessel that happens upon a swarm of live g-torps and sets off their 3-seconds of hellfire because they don't have the code to disarm them.

* Of course, the author's statement would still hold true if those g-torps also self-destructed. But would it be advisable to detonate huge salvos of g-torps that missed their targets, possibly alerting the enemy that they were even launched? In the case of impeller-driven missiles the enemy already knows when they are launched.

cthia wrote:Forgive me for cycling back around to this, but in TEiF the Alignment does introduce the notion of reusable munitions with the mobile pods! So, reusing unspent g-torps is definitely a possibility. I forgot the name of those pods.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Forgive me for cycling back around to this, but in TEiF the Alignment does introduce the notion of reusable munitions with the mobile pods! So, reusing unspent g-torps is definitely a possibility. I forgot the name of those pods.

Torpedoes are reusable like Ghost Riders (and they have about the same size). Those have on-board power generation facilities to last anywhere from days to months. They don't burn themselves out just by moving around.

Missiles aren't reusable. Once the first impeller is fired, the clock is ticking. The gravitic resonances or whatever are going to irreparably destroy the impellers. I don't know if the power subsystems are reusable after being used once, but it's possible they're not either. So after a missile is fired, at most the warhead and lenses are reusable. The majority of the missile body needs to be scrapped and a new one built.

So unspent missiles may be recovered for use as scrap material and obviously to deny the enemy access to your technology.

cthia wrote:I was specifically talking about unspent g-torps in the Darius system. Since the MA may have to launch huge salvos that may never get to fire because they never find a target.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I was specifically talking about unspent g-torps in the Darius system. Since the MA may have to launch huge salvos that may never get to fire because they never find a target.

Sure, they can be recovered. In fact, those should simply decelerate, turn around, and go for another attack run, if the enemy is still there.