Attacking Darius:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Thanks for the datum. Indeed, I increased that range to 1 million km, giving the MAlign an advantage because we know they have a long-lasting graser beam. If they made a breakthrough in endurance and this weapon is basically a big reactor to power the graser, I think it's acceptable to say it could punch through a sidewall at a million km. Of course, if it's 800,000 km or 600,000 km, that makes it much easier for the invaders.

Powerful for a missile. Not so powerful in the grand scheme of things. The Graser torp mounts a "cruiser-grade graser projector" [MoH: Ch 28]. That's far more powerful than a laserhead at similar range (30-50,000 km); but like a laserhead it's dangerous primarily because honorverse energy weapons are far more range sensitive than the physics we know seems to say they should be. So getting in close makes them far more effective and getting too far back renders robs them of the power they need to be effective. But still, the GL torp's graser should do less damage than a Shrike could do if was able to close to the same range. And since even an SD's (far more powerful) grasers are ineffective against (any) sidewalls at over 400,000 - 500,000 km I wouldn't expect the MALign's energy mounts to be noticeably more effective at long range fire.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Oh and for completeness -- Havenite CMs seem to still have about a 1.5 million km range, while the latest RMN/GSN/IAN CMs, the Mk31s, have a 3.5 million km range -- so in all cases much further than energy range.

Problem here is not range, but time. You can only fire at a target at 1.5 million km if you it's going to be there when you launch. In this scenario, the defenders aren't detected until they reach that 1.5 million km shell and 750,000 km from the nearest ship that can launch CMs.

If we go back to the older scenario with a Cataphract was launched from a million km it'd stage instantly and would take only 45 seconds for its 2nd stage to close to laserhead range (at a terminal velocity of a mere 43.2 kps; meaning it'd be dead meat for the PDLCs. And a Mk31 coming the other way would take only 39.2 seconds to cover that same distance; which means it could launch from the target ship as late as 36 seconds after the Cataphract and still intercept before laserhead range.
Or if they launched simultaneously the Mk31 would intercept the Cataphract 2nd stage in 29.95 seconds; at 571,390 km from the target ship.

If the Cataphract was launched at a closer 250,000 km target it'd still take them over 38 seconds to get to laserhead range; but again the targeted escort's Mk31 could launch a bit over 29 seconds later and still intercept short of that point.
Or if they launched simultaneously the Mk31 would intercept the Cataphract 2nd stage in 29.95 seconds; at 427,305 km from the target escort.

Yes you're obviously not going to get the full CM intercept range (since we're hypothesizing a launch from inside that max range) but since the CMs are quicker than the Cataphracts first CM salvo intercepts are still likely to happen at about 50% of launch range (even allowing for some slight delay in return fire) and since you need to get to under 50,000 km for the warhead to be effective that's just a losing battle. (Plus as I briefly mentioned the low velocity makes them a sitting duck for PDLCs once they cross the IIRC 100,000 km effective range of those. And if the cataphracts are targeted at the main fleet and need to fly past the screening escorts then they're moving even slower and should take heavy losses to the screen's PDLCs trying to break past them.

By the time you're close enough that the target won't be able to launch CMs in response to a missile launch you're already well inside your own energy range; so you'd be using those. (Plus you're inside the formation and no way in hell you haven't already been detected)


But also, before we spend too much time taking about sneaking into ranges of 1 - 1.5 million km, remember that the Ghost sneaking around Grayson (which should be a somewhat harder thing to spot than anything armed; just due to it's smaller size and lower power budget) was getting starting to get nervous about detection from ships approaching two light-minutes away. They obviously weren't detected, and I'm sure the captain was being conservative, but if they were reasonably confident of being undetected until 1.5 million km why would they start sweating as a ship approached 36 million?
And that was against a single ship without drones out; while we're told in that same passage that having drones out to provide multiple viewing angles significantly increases the chances of penetrating the stealth. (Plus we're told that at close enough ranges the stealth field they're using can, itself, be detected). So I seriously doubt they're sneaking undetected any closer than about 10 million km against a formation that'd got drones out and looking for sneaky bastards.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The drawback is that pieces of the destroyed shipyards may fall on the planet and cause mass destruction. You know, like Oyster Bay.

If you are engaging from light minutes the real issue is that your missiles will strike the planet directly.

The MAN spent a lot of effort avoiding producing a geometry that intersected the planets because MDMs are very stupid and tend to lock onto things that they shouldn't.

But Apollo is a lot smarter than Cataphracts or older MDMs, and we're told it's even a bit smarter than the AI in a graser torp. It'd be far less risky to use Apollo to make a long range strike on orbital facilities. (And if your primary purpose is to force defenders to reveal themselves then you don't need to come in at max velocity so you can afford to spread themselves way out so they can converge on courses through the planet's orbital space that can't intersect with the planet itself.

kzt wrote:If you are engaging from light minutes the real issue is that your missiles will strike the planet directly.

Is that still true with Apollo, assuming the control loop is within 4 light-minutes?

Jonathan_S wrote:But also, before we spend too much time taking about sneaking into ranges of 1 - 1.5 million km, remember that the Ghost sneaking around Grayson (which should be a somewhat harder thing to spot than anything armed; just due to it's smaller size and lower power budget) was getting starting to get nervous about detection from ships approaching two light-minutes away. They obviously weren't detected, and I'm sure the captain was being conservative, but if they were reasonably confident of being undetected until 1.5 million km why would they start sweating as a ship approached 36 million?
And that was against a single ship without drones out; while we're told in that same passage that having drones out to provide multiple viewing angles significantly increases the chances of penetrating the stealth. (Plus we're told that at close enough ranges the stealth field they're using can, itself, be detected). So I seriously doubt they're sneaking undetected any closer than about 10 million km against a formation that'd got drones out and looking for sneaky bastards.

Human nature.

This was the first deployment of the MAN stealth under battle conditions, against real GSN and RMN sensors. Up until then, they had tested only at home, using whatever sensors they had and extrapolating to what they thought their enemy could do. So they had no hard, real data saying how far detections could happen.

This was a captain sitting on a ship that was basically an eggshell: no sidewalls, no wedge, and very limited acceleration. There was no way they could run or defend themselves if they were found. And if they were, that would blow the entire operation, since the shipyards would immediately go into alert mode. And depending on how early they were detected, there may be time to send a courier to Manticore and prevent the attacks there (the attacks didn't have to happen simultaneously, only within the time it would take a courier to warn the other side, which is about one week).

Jonathan_S wrote:

kzt wrote:But Apollo is a lot smarter than Cataphracts or older MDMs, and we're told it's even a bit smarter than the AI in a graser torp. It'd be far less risky to use Apollo to make a long range strike on orbital facilities. (And if your primary purpose is to force defenders to reveal themselves then you don't need to come in at max velocity so you can afford to spread themselves way out so they can converge on courses through the planet's orbital space that can't intersect with the planet itself.

Maybe.

I suspect that it's probably possible to produce a noise jammer to prevent Apollo communication at a pretty good distance if you know where they will attack. You'll know exactly where the fleet is, so you can hammer them with extremely powerful signals (vastly more powerful than the missile transmitters) that are probably better collimated than the missile transmitters.

This would also jam the recon sat uplinks.

Jamming the fleet to missile link is harder, but given spiders, not that much. You can see the fleet coming for a long time while they cross a huge amount of distance. So you maneuver ships a much shorter distance into what would be a blocking position. (This is in addition to the ones that are going for a direct attack on the fleet.) Sharks would probably work for this.

And then you blast the hell out of the missile receivers with jammers.

then, as the fleet starts having to deal with the 100,000 MDMs waves, SD(P)s start to mysteriously explode.

And there is no particular reason you'll be able to localize a long range invisible target using energy weapons is you are light minutes out.

Lastly classic old-school LACs are perfectly suitable for local missile defense. You don't need super advanced reactors when you mission is 12-48 hours. There is no reason to reveal your best systems. And the 50,000 LAC wedges should do a pretty good job of hiding them anyhow.

I apologize for my attendance in class lately. This time of the year is very busy for me, while we are all still in the middle of a pandemic to boot. I am always lighting fires I can ill-afford to control. And you people are making it hot in this sector of the Galaxy by bringing along the Big Guns, er, Slip Sticks. Nice posts!

****** *


At any rate, I have called this meeting of all of my department heads because a lot of you are continuing to make the same mistake, and you are going to get your asses shot off in this system.

And, I am aware that we're out of coffee, but remember gentlemen, this is the War Room. We can't fight in the War Room.

I'm so melodramatic aren't I? Isn't that why y'all like me so much?

Anyway, We are not fighting against the average enemy gentlemen. This enemy is ruthless and we will be uninvited guests in their system. These minds are malignant, and our old ways of doing things are dead in the water. We will be formulating tactics on the fly.

But first, I need confirmation from proper military channels (textev) on a couple of matters before we continue. Namely:

Jonathan_S wrote:I think its even worse that you said. Spider drives are extremely volume intensive and (as far as we know) force the ships into elongated hull forms with at least 3 long keels sticking out to mount the large number of projectors necessary to achieve even minimal Honorverse accelerations.

And additionally, the notion of pre-spider-drive forts was brought up by someone a few klicks back. Are we assuming the refit of these forts with spider drives will be as labor intensive as refitting old SDs?

And do consider that this thread has as its prerequisite everything discussed as a possibility in the ? thread.

cthia wrote:And additionally, the notion of pre-spider-drive forts was brought up by someone a few klicks back. Are we assuming the refit of these forts with spider drives will be as volume intensive as refitting old SDs?

As we're given to understand forts are normally spherically shaped - but all the spider drives we've seen require long straight keels sticking out of the ship to mount spider drive emitters on. I don't know how well, or even if, spider drives would work if laid over the curved hull of a spherical fort.

Still you can probably fit at least a few. But those emitters are implied to be quite large and so they take up a lot of surface area (in addition to how far they might penetrate back into internal volume). Even if they're no larger than beta nodes a fort need a single ring of those to move; but requires at least 3 rows of spider emitters.

Maybe, maybe, you'd be able to work them in short curves of about 1/3rd of the hull cicumphrence, in which case if they're beta node sized the 3 mini-keels might take up no more surface area than the impeller ring did (though differently oriented). Though with the relative handful of emitters you could fit there, compared to the ones you get put on a km+ long keel, it would probably have an accelerate over less than 10-20 gees.

And because the spider emitter rows have to be laid parallel to each other a equidistant around the cicumphrence of the hull, even if the take no more surface area than the beta nodes you'd remove it'd be in different places which means adding armor to cover the holes the beta nodes left and removing armor (and quite likely also weapons and sensors) to clear space to install the spider where needed.

That's a vast amount of work - and when you're done the fort is still carrying basically the same weapons fit it had before. And you've already probably spent nearly as long and nearly as much industrial effort as just designing and building a brand new design around your current weapons and propulsion.

I just don't see retrofitting any fort the MAlign might have build there as useful. Either keep them for their point defense, or move them out for close cover of the wormhole, or scrap them -- but if you want modern forts you're far, far, better off building a clean sheet design. (And honestly, forts don't really move tactically - they normally fight in place protected by their bubble sidewall. If you want something to sneak around and launch attacks that's a ship; so build those. Don't try to turn your forts into ships.

Jonathan_S wrote:I just don't see retrofitting any fort the MAlign might have build there as useful. Either keep them for their point defense, or move them out for close cover of the wormhole, or scrap them -- but if you want modern forts you're far, far, better off building a clean sheet design. (And honestly, forts don't really move tactically - they normally fight in place protected by their bubble sidewall. If you want something to sneak around and launch attacks that's a ship; so build those. Don't try to turn your forts into ships.

I'll repeat what you just said so it sticks: if you want forts, make forts; if you want ships, make ships. Don't try to make a fort that fights like a ship, it'll be as good as neither and will likely have the weaknesses of both.

At its most basic, the problem a Manticoran or anyone else's fort has is that it can't move. It's not a consequence of the design, they're not required to move tactically in the first place. And because they don't have to, they don't have powerful wedges and they can hide behind bubble walls, covering all aspects.

Impeller ships must have at least one aspect open in order to accelerate. That means they have at least one area of vulnerability. Moreover, that also places an upper limit on their mass (which limits how many weapons it can carry internally). And the fact of using an impeller tactically implies a specific shape, which reduces from the ideal surface/volume ratio (which is a sphere).

Spider ships don't have just one aspect open: they have all of them. They are limited to 150 gravities not because that's what the spiders can achieve, but because it's what the grav plates can protect the crew from. So an MAN fort could go up to 150 gravities using other propulsion mechanisms. And regardless of what it is, once the bubble wall goes up, it isn't moving and isn't stealth. On the other hand, wouldn't a fort with the same stealth technology, with its gun ports closed, bubble wall down, and whatever propulsion mechanism it has offline, be as undetectable as a spider ship?

So that leads to the question: why bother with a spider on a fort?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:So that leads to the question: why bother with a spider on a fort?

I agree. You use the stealth systems from spider on your static defenses, not the drive.

You use spiders as the mobile force to raise hell against the attackers.

You use traditional wedge ships and craft where they made sense too. Like anti-missile/anti-recon missions.

You also do unorthodox things. Like realizing that your SD missiles don't have to fit in ships, so you can have ones that have 100 missiles.

And maybe using a missile booster for a torpedo...

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But also, before we spend too much time taking about sneaking into ranges of 1 - 1.5 million km, remember that the Ghost sneaking around Grayson (which should be a somewhat harder thing to spot than anything armed; just due to it's smaller size and lower power budget) was getting starting to get nervous about detection from ships approaching two light-minutes away. They obviously weren't detected, and I'm sure the captain was being conservative, but if they were reasonably confident of being undetected until 1.5 million km why would they start sweating as a ship approached 36 million?
And that was against a single ship without drones out; while we're told in that same passage that having drones out to provide multiple viewing angles significantly increases the chances of penetrating the stealth. (Plus we're told that at close enough ranges the stealth field they're using can, itself, be detected). So I seriously doubt they're sneaking undetected any closer than about 10 million km against a formation that'd got drones out and looking for sneaky bastards.

Human nature.

This was the first deployment of the MAN stealth under battle conditions, against real GSN and RMN sensors. Up until then, they had tested only at home, using whatever sensors they had and extrapolating to what they thought their enemy could do. So they had no hard, real data saying how far detections could happen.

This was a captain sitting on a ship that was basically an eggshell: no sidewalls, no wedge, and very limited acceleration. There was no way they could run or defend themselves if they were found. And if they were, that would blow the entire operation, since the shipyards would immediately go into alert mode. And depending on how early they were detected, there may be time to send a courier to Manticore and prevent the attacks there (the attacks didn't have to happen simultaneously, only within the time it would take a courier to warn the other side, which is about one week).

Much to respond to.

Also, do consider that the Spider may be a lot stealthier.