Fall 1924: What will the Admiralty build next

Relax wrote:There is never a need for a new build or old build SD to hunt down a freighter. Certainly with FTL MDM's that now have 62X the range of old missiles limited by light speed hunting freighters is an absurd joke. With FTL missiles they can literally fire light hours away. This puts an ENTIRE solar system under direct control of a single FTL equipped missile ship.

Oops. The control loop is 62x faster if both sender and receiver are using FTL links. It will be 31x faster if you only have Ghost Rider drones look at your targets but you need to send updates to the missiles via lightspeed (no KH2).

But that does not translate to 62x longer range. It barely translates to 1.25x longer range.

The same FTL-equipped Mk23E missiles do increase the effective range by a very long margin, as seen in the Battle of Beowulf during Operation Fabius, but it wasn't because of the FTL capabilities. And 62x the previous range of of 3.6 light-minutes would put any target outside the hyperlimit and several hours away at any n-space speed (limited by the speed of light), so the target can simply translate to hyper and come back at a different place. An engagement over half a light-hour away makes no sense.

True, currently DW has said FTL's range is not that great, but we already know range is hundreds of millions of kilometers. Maybe not quite a light hour(1 Billion kilometers), but range ability is only increasing not decreasing and we have already seen several hundred kilommeters range. This already means any habitable planets infrastructure can be targetted from outside the hyper limit.

It's much less than that, without relays. See Jonathan's reply.

Manticore sits at 10 light-minutes from the primary and the Manticore-A hyperlimit is 22 light-minutes. That would place its closest approach at 12 light-minutes from the hyperlimit. Any dual-drive missile can make the flight; whether it can find its target once it gets there is the big question.

BTW, that places Sphinx at 20 light-minutes, per Kepler's Third Law.

1 light hour on the Sol system is a distance between SOL and between Jupiter and Saturn. DW has the hyperlimit barely outside of mars itself.

Indeed, but Jupiter has a hyperlimit of its own of 3 light-minutes and is better protected than Sphinx. Saturn would have something too. Though all three are within range of the original MDMs' powered range.

With FTL missiles it actually means Manticore and any other planetary system with a wormhole are the SAFEST planets around as the resonance zones make their defensive depth deeper for at least SOME portion of the local year.

It's possible to emerge there. But emerging on the hyperlimit at the least-time course is also the worst possible location, since it's the most obvious and therefore the one most likely to get a brace of missiles back before you can cycle your hypergenerators. One should emerge at least 3.5 minutes of missile flight time away from that point.

They must start building infrastructure near Mercury or equivalent and in resonance zones of solar systems with wormholes.

Of course. Added benefit: increased solar incidence per unit of area. That means more power available. There's even an orbital location where the push of the solar wind equals the gravitational attraction of the star, allowing something to remain fixed in the star system. Don't ask me to calculate this.

This also makes ships defending systems from OUTSIDE the hyper limit able to truly cover an entire perimeter from pirates. Yet one more nail in the coffin of a Frigate. Of course governments will still build them to cut costs not to actually fight a war.

Actually at this point, why bother with a hyper generator at all? Just build permanent stations at the periphery somewhere where all traffic is directed and can be covered, Cerberus style.

It's very difficult to defend anything outside the hyperlimit. It's just too big and the attacker has the option to escape back into hyperspace, especially if they're using light units with very short hypergenerator cycle time.

So, yes, the only way to defend is to do as you say: concentrate the important installations in narrow regions that you can cover against surprise attack. As for the traffic and resource extraction, you simply make it non-profitable to attack, by dispersing them so much that no attacker could hope to cause significant damage before being intercepted.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:There is never a need for a new build or old build SD to hunt down a freighter. Certainly with FTL MDM's that now have 62X the range of old missiles limited by light speed hunting freighters is an absurd joke. With FTL missiles they can literally fire light hours away. This puts an ENTIRE solar system under direct control of a single FTL equipped missile ship.

True, currently DW has said FTL's range is not that great, but we already know range is hundreds of millions of kilometers. Maybe not quite a light hour(1 Billion kilometers), but range ability is only increasing not decreasing and we have already seen several hundred kilommeters range. This already means any habitable planets infrastructure can be targetted from outside the hyper limit.

Actually, without FTL relays (hello Mycroft), which an attacking SD(P) wouldn't have available to it, UH tells us that the current FTL control range is less than 4.05 light minutes. At least for the 23Es. The system defense variant is supposed to be larger and have a longer range FTL link.

(Or rather, it tells us that at the BoM Chin's fleet which we know to have been at 4.05 LM/73 million km was just beyond FTL range, but the missiles were under FTL control until 'close enough')

So if you're shooting across an entire star system you better hope it's one you've pre-seeded with Mycroft fire control relays, Ghost Rider + Hermes lashups, or else you're leaving it all up to the 23E's onboard 'AI'.

As evidenced multiple times in the books, RD's give signals half a light hour away as far back as Honor of the Queen. That also means they also have transceivers able to transmit that distance as well.

On top of that we have simulator "scouting" using FTL missiles in ? A rise of Thunder? 100Mkm away. We then also have FTL missiles used at Beowulf 150+ Mkm away. On top of that, DW and you are both shaving very fine regarding AAC and AAC itself completely abuses the same statements making them irrelevant when getting 2nd fleet to surrender 200Mkm away using FTL missiles. Clearly the HV has moved on since that point in time.

On top of the above considerations, the topic was the absurdity of an SD hunting down a freighter... or piracy etc. 1 missiles for that is all that is required, maybe 10 at most. This alone makes the 200Mkm shown in AAC 100% valid.

On top of that there is no reason one could not for system defense at extremes just use an RD body to carry a laser head or two to the target in question. You get the RD back as well as forward scout which just happens to also carry a missile warhead.

That is after all where the HV is going. If one adds up the tonnages, an RD + Laser head =~1st havenite war large missiles or probably equivalent to the Cataphract III C's the malign is building. So what if they are slightly slower to arrive when launched from an RD? They are still coming in at 0.8C and with the RD's stealth cannot be seen, localized, and destroyed until ~300,000km from ANYONE's sensors(often 10X less in the books aka laser head range). This means NO ECM, and NO CM's can attack them as only PDLC's are worth a damn as they do not even know they are coming other than pure logic that yes, the potential enemy will attack/defend.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Relax wrote:There is never a need for a new build or old build SD to hunt down a freighter. Certainly with FTL MDM's that now have 62X the range of old missiles limited by light speed hunting freighters is an absurd joke. With FTL missiles they can literally fire light hours away. This puts an ENTIRE solar system under direct control of a single FTL equipped missile ship.

Oops. The control loop is 62x faster if both sender and receiver are using FTL links. It will be 31x faster if you only have Ghost Rider drones look at your targets but you need to send updates to the missiles via lightspeed (no KH2).

But that does not translate to 62x longer range. It barely translates to 1.25x longer range.

Using YOUR logic, using FTL both ways would be 124X faster. Lets just assume we both are using the HV DW's nomenclature in the books to limit confusion as we will always assume we have FTL RD's, or as seen in the books, an FTL missile providing the data faster than the RD at whatever range is wished for. Therefore what we are all talking about and we all know we are talking about is data from the mama ship TO the missile is 62X faster.

Just another thought experiment: Why would a ship not start carrying a couple 4 stage MDM's without laser heads, or why not 6 stage? 2 or 3 stages to get up to speed(0.8C), go ballistic, 2 or 3 stages to slow down... just no BOOM at the end. As close to instant recon drone as is possible to get. Carry it externally.

Your range is in direct conflict with the books by a MASSIVE margin. See my post to John.

Got to go, sorry I have not replied to the rest of your post, will do so when I can.

Relax wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Actually, without FTL relays (hello Mycroft), which an attacking SD(P) wouldn't have available to it, UH tells us that the current FTL control range is less than 4.05 light minutes. At least for the 23Es. The system defense variant is supposed to be larger and have a longer range FTL link.

(Or rather, it tells us that at the BoM Chin's fleet which we know to have been at 4.05 LM/73 million km was just beyond FTL range, but the missiles were under FTL control until 'close enough')

So if you're shooting across an entire star system you better hope it's one you've pre-seeded with Mycroft fire control relays, Ghost Rider + Hermes lashups, or else you're leaving it all up to the 23E's onboard 'AI'.

As evidenced multiple times in the books, RD's give signals half a light hour away as far back as Honor of the Queen. That also means they also have transceivers able to transmit that distance as well.

On top of that we have simulator "scouting" using FTL missiles in ? A rise of Thunder? 100Mkm away. We then also have FTL missiles used at Beowulf 150+ Mkm away. On top of that, DW and you are both shaving very fine regarding AAC and AAC itself completely abuses the same statements making them irrelevant when getting 2nd fleet to surrender 200Mkm away using FTL missiles. Clearly the HV has moved on since that point in time.

On top of the above considerations, the topic was the absurdity of an SD hunting down a freighter... or piracy etc. 1 missiles for that is all that is required, maybe 10 at most. This alone makes the 200Mkm shown in AAC 100% valid.

On top of that there is no reason one could not for system defense at extremes just use an RD body to carry a laser head or two to the target in question. You get the RD back as well as forward scout which just happens to also carry a missile warhead.

That is after all where the HV is going. If one adds up the tonnages, an RD + Laser head =~1st havenite war large missiles or probably equivalent to the Cataphract III C's the malign is building. So what if they are slightly slower to arrive when launched from an RD? They are still coming in at 0.8C and with the RD's stealth cannot be seen, localized, and destroyed until ~300,000km from ANYONE's sensors(often 10X less in the books aka laser head range). This means NO ECM, and NO CM's can attack them as only PDLC's are worth a damn as they do not even know they are coming other than pure logic that yes, the potential enemy will attack/defend.

Sure, FTL tranceivers are likely to get better and that'll make them effective (without relays) at longer ranges. But right now the 23Es have limits on how far away they can communicate via FTL.

RD's presumably also have limits, but they're longer ranged. Possibly because RDs transmit far lower bandwith, which might keep their signal intelligible longer. (And no, I don't know why RFC as apparently decreed than a Honorverse missile requires more bandwidth for fire control than multiple 4K video streams). But mostly I suspect RDs simply have room for larger more powerful transmitters and larger more sensitve receivers -- after all they're several times larger than even the oversized 23E Apollo control missile.
Also we're told that one of the things they got in the design of the larger 23F system defense Apollo control missiles was longer ranged FTL.


I believe the simulation you were references was the one Michelle Henke was running in chapter 13 of SftS. She was simulating BC's with FTL fire control using Apollo as a fast RD at

Storm From The Shadows wrote:In one of Adenauer's and Edwards' brainstorming sessions with Michelle, however, Edwards had pointed out a new possibility which Apollo made possible. Fast as the Ghost Rider platforms were, they were immensely slower than an MDM. They had to be, since stealth and long endurance were completely incompatible with the massive acceleration rates produced by an attack missile's impeller wedge in its brief, incredibly un-stealthy lifetime. But Apollo was designed to combine and analyze the readings from the attack missiles slaved to it . . . and to transmit that analysis back to the launching ship at FTL speed. Michelle and Adenauer had grasped his point immediately and run with it, and this simulation was designed to test what they'd come up with. What Adenauer had done was to fire a single Apollo pod thirty seconds before they fired a complete squadron salvo. And that pod was now one minute's flight from the "unknown impeller wedges" eighty-two million kilometers from Artemis.

And yes 82 million km, 4.56 LM, is further than the range later (in UH) claimed for Apollo FTL during the BoM. OTOH I don't know how much trust we can put in the simulated range of Apollo when we know it was already fudging things by assuming battlecruisers could communicate via FTL. (They were already simulating at least one thing that was beyond current RMN tech; so they may not have felt any need to restrict themselves to simulating current link ranges either)


In the BoM Tourville's fleet was encouraged to surrender at 8 lm 143,900,380 km (not 200 million); which was explicitly given as being way beyond Apollo's FTL range except that Honor lashed up a few control channels through a Hermes buoy.

And yes, at Beowulf the missiles were used at extreme range. But UH also explicitly noted that they were beyond fire control range for the vast majority of that time (IIRC 9 of the 11 minutes of flight) -- all that does is show how effective the missiles are in fully autonomous mode.



But I don't think "able to catch a 250-year-old freigther" was intended to be a statement of a required role for anybody's SD. It was just a way of illustrating how low an acceleration and oversized unit would have.

You wouldn't send an SD to do that even if it had a major accel advantage; that's what LACs or escort units are for; assuming you want to stop and board. If you just want to kill the fleeing unit, well Apollo is great for that even after it falls back to autonomous control.

Relax wrote:That is after all where the HV is going. If one adds up the tonnages, an RD + Laser head =~1st havenite war large missiles or probably equivalent to the Cataphract III C's the malign is building. So what if they are slightly slower to arrive when launched from an RD? They are still coming in at 0.8C and with the RD's stealth cannot be seen, localized, and destroyed until ~300,000km from ANYONE's sensors(often 10X less in the books aka laser head range). This means NO ECM, and NO CM's can attack them as only PDLC's are worth a damn as they do not even know they are coming other than pure logic that yes, the potential enemy will attack/defend.

They're NOT slightly slower. An RD is as slow as missile from Travis' time: 3500 gravities. It takes nearly 2 hours for one of those to get to 0.8c... and 46 light-minutes on a straight line. A more realistic scenario is 10 to 12 light-minutes range, which is the distance from a planet to the hyperlimit... but that increases the speed to about 0.4c.

In any case, the SLN Hastas are basically that: a missile strapped on an RD. That has the added advantage that the missile can go into sprint mode and add to the base speed that the RD provided, but it's not trying to be stealthy at that point. But Honor detected the Galton Hastas via their bowshocks before they got to 0.4c. We're still discussing whether that's a property of a wedge-powered device or if anything at that speed is going to produce a bowshock, but that's not relevant to the situation at hand.

Relax wrote:Just another thought experiment: Why would a ship not start carrying a couple 4 stage MDM's without laser heads, or why not 6 stage? 2 or 3 stages to get up to speed(0.8C), go ballistic, 2 or 3 stages to slow down... just no BOOM at the end. As close to instant recon drone as is possible to get. Carry it externally.

Because it's going to be very big and costly, not to mention it won't fit any launcher or pod that are currently in use. When they designed the Apollo system, they also didn't expect that accuracy would be acceptable at ranges much greater than a 3-stage missile could achieve. Now we know that those missiles can have incredible accuracy up to 200 million km away, so indeed 4 stages could help.

Beyond 4 stages doesn't help because you've already achieved the maximum n-space speed relative to the particles in the system. Unless you want to run them at full sprint mode. In that case, with an acceleration of roughly 0.18c/min, you need 5 stages (5 minutes) to reach the speed limit.

If you wanted instead to decelerate to zero relative to the launch platform, then you'd indeed need six stages, for an 18-minute and 130 million km flight. The problem is that whatever you were trying to get data on had 18 minutes to move away. If you're trying to get sensor drones close by, it stands to reason you don't have a good sensor lock on whatever your target is, so arriving 18 minutes late may not help (sure, it's better than nothing).

Missiles don't have a good sensor suite. The Apollo system worked well because it combined the lots of crappy sensors, creating one very good one. Whatever this thing is, it would have to either be launched in sufficient quantities or have a bigger body to house a reasonably good sensor suite. Probably both.

I'm not dismissing this. It's a good idea. I just don't know if it is cost-effective.

Your range is in direct conflict with the books by a MASSIVE margin. See my post to John.

I'm not talking about the range of the link itself, which is what you replied. I'm talking about the range where the ship's sensors and CIC computers controlling those missiles via the FTL link can help them be accurate. See Honor's reply to Tourville that she could not have taken him from 8 light-minutes away, but she did hammer Chin at 4. So at this time, they thought the range was around 5 or maybe 6 light-minutes. The FTL link would help them control the missiles to target much better than they could with a 3.6-minute one-way delay, so this is what they predicted the accuracy range would be.

They and we learned later that the range where accuracy is still acceptable is much greater. But that's not due to the FTL link, because they didn't have one during the Battle of Beowulf. And because they were light-speed, that means the missiles were completely autonomous for the last 6 minutes or so of the flight.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:They're NOT slightly slower. An RD is as slow as missile from Travis' time: 3500 gravities. It takes nearly 2 hours for one of those to get to 0.8c... and 46 light-minutes on a straight line. A more realistic scenario is 10 to 12 light-minutes range, which is the distance from a planet to the hyperlimit... but that increases the speed to about 0.4c.

IIRC Ghost Riders are better than that. From memory I want to say they're capable of 5,000 gees with a reasonable degree of long range stealth and twice that if you don't care who sees them.

Mind you, even that flat out rate is less than 1/4 what an RMN missile would pull on it's (very non-stealthy) approach.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If you wanted instead to decelerate to zero relative to the launch platform, then you'd indeed need six stages, for an 18-minute and 130 million km flight. The problem is that whatever you were trying to get data on had 18 minutes to move away. If you're trying to get sensor drones close by, it stands to reason you don't have a good sensor lock on whatever your target is, so arriving 18 minutes late may not help (sure, it's better than nothing).

Against a lot of targets I think the bigger problem is that a blind man could see that probe coming -- and it's going to be a dead easy target if it strays into CM range. So you better be sure your zero-zero stops a useful distance beyond that.
(Cause if you were going to just let it be destroyed on approach then you might have well gotten the sensor take sooner by letting it go screaming in at high fractions of c)

Of course if it did come to a relative stop beyond CM range it's then stuck there, immobile, and most target ships could either move in to kill it, or run away from its sensors, at 400+ gees.


So for most scenarios I don't think a missile able to stop itself would make a noticeably more effective recon asset.

Jonathan_S wrote:Against a lot of targets I think the bigger problem is that a blind man could see that probe coming -- and it's going to be a dead easy target if it strays into CM range. So you better be sure your zero-zero stops a useful distance beyond that.

Indeed, so that thing needs to stop over 2.5 million km away, assuming CM range doesn't shoot up. It's also moving really slowly, so it's a sitting duck for any CM.

Of course if it did come to a relative stop beyond CM range it's then stuck there, immobile, and most target ships could either move in to kill it, or run away from its sensors, at 400+ gees.

And this, yes.

Which means it's stupid to come to a complete zero relative velocity. It needs to stop decelerating while still carrying some approaching velocity, say 0.05c. But once it shuts down that last wedge, from so far away, it disappears from any scanner.

From 2.4 million km away and 0.05c, the probe would take 2400 / (300 * .05) = 160 seconds to the closest approach. Assuming it had a good reading on any lateral velocity the target and matched it before shutting down the wedge, in 160 seconds a target even at 800 gravities would deflect only 50000 km.

The probe can't continue completely ballistic. It must have at a minimum a reserve of chemical propellant so it can change its vector a little, at least a couple dozen times its own length, so by the time it reaches energy range at shutdown plus 93 seconds, it won't get immediately destroyed.

At 1 million km, this probe would have very good sensor readings and could transmit via FTL back to the sender and continue to do so until it's destroyed or goes out of range on the other side, in another 133 seconds.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Against a lot of targets I think the bigger problem is that a blind man could see that probe coming -- and it's going to be a dead easy target if it strays into CM range. So you better be sure your zero-zero stops a useful distance beyond that.

Indeed, so that thing needs to stop over 2.5 million km away, assuming CM range doesn't shoot up. It's also moving really slowly, so it's a sitting duck for any CM.

To be fair most folk's CMs top out around 1.5 million km; so a million km buffer might be excessively cautious.

In fact, to date, I can only recall seeing 3 designs reach beyond ~1.5 million km from rest:
* RMN designed Mk30 CM ~2.3 million km
* RMN designed Mk31 CM ~3.6 million km (ditto its Viper derivative)
* Galton's 2-stage CMs

Though the drive from the 2nd stage drive of an original Cataphract, using Duckk's numbers, would be able to power a ~2.7 million km CM. But there's no evidence the MAlign or the SLN actually built and used such a CM (and it may not fit into their existing CM tubes)