Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:IINM the RMN uses a BC grade graser for an antimissile role on at least one of the LACs, per the drunken and as of lately drunker wiki.

I believe that is correct, in fact I think that graser have always been a part of the anti-missile defense. With the trend to many more numerous grasers on ships, it with probably increase their use in an anti-missile role. I remember reading, a long time ago and have not found it since, that a graser is able to make multiple lower power shots in place of one big full power shot (something that an X-ray laser could not do).

Therefore, if the fire control is available, I would expect that these graser platforms will be used in an anti-missile role; something that a mine could never do.

PS: The threat analysis on incoming missiles occurs prior to the CM fire control and so it is not clear to me that the PDLC's are dependent on the CM controls; therefore I do not understand why a graser in anti-missile mode would need that tie either.

When I said "counter missile" there, I meant defense radars and Firecontrol, not necessarily the CM missile system themselves. The defensive systems are separate from offensive shipkiller systems.

From Jayne's RMN:

In beam range, Manticoran ships rarely mount grasers on ships smaller than heavy cruisers, though experimentation with close in fighting doctrines (such as mounting grav lances and energy torpedoes on small ships with high acceleration rates) have been tried. Unlike Havenite beam mounts, Manticoran energy mounts are not extensively optimized for firing at incoming missiles; this is consistent with the doctrinal shift of trying to kill laser heads before they reach detonation range, and the general emphasis on countermissiles.

Please note: this is a 1905 comment, and the RMN has doubled down of PDLCs later in the series. The Sag-C for-ex had 24 PDLCs clusters in each broadside. as mentioned in UH, after the first Flight, these original 8 emitter clusters were replaced in new construction with 12 emitter clusters, with each emitter having a cycle time 50% faster than the earlier ones. This easily gives the SAG-C more countermissile capabilities than pre-war SDs.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:IINM the RMN uses a BC grade graser for an antimissile role on at least one of the LACs per the drunken, and as of late drunker, wiki.

IIRC the RMN will take shots with their main energy mounts against missiles (if they've nothing better to shoot at) -- but the Peeps are supposed to be more effective at that tactic. But in neither case is it anywhere near as effective as a PDLC mount at hitting an incoming missile.

The main energy mounts just lack the fast and fine control, or the cyclic rate, of a proper point defense energy mount.

(And if you're talking about using the platforms being build with ex-SLN grasers for anti-missile defense then those only have 5-6 shots before maintenance; so you're not even getting to take many of your low probability shots against incoming missiles. Well, unless they've some low power mode that would let them eke out more shots before going offline pending servicing)

Havenites were better at the tactic? Well, since Shannon is the purveyor of these goods, shouldn’t she have that ability in mind? I hardly think cycle rate will be a problem with 10,000 platforms.

But may we visit Honor’s quote again, poor me is in need of clarification.

In fact, she’s already worked out the quickest way to run up a remote platform tied into the central fire control system of a standard terminus fort.”

Is that an extra platform in-between the graser platform and the forts? That’s how I read it. Something is the size of the 400,000 ton Mycroft or Moriarty platforms. Platforms that feature their own fire control systems. I read Honor’s quote as a Mycroft/Moriarty platform’s fire control is to be tied into the fort’s fire control. That is why upstream I said "possibly another 10,000 platforms." Do I need to worry about indigestion from “misdigestion?”

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:IIRC the RMN will take shots with their main energy mounts against missiles (if they've nothing better to shoot at) -- but the Peeps are supposed to be more effective at that tactic. But in neither case is it anywhere near as effective as a PDLC mount at hitting an incoming missile.

The main energy mounts just lack the fast and fine control, or the cyclic rate, of a proper point defense energy mount.

(And if you're talking about using the platforms being build with ex-SLN grasers for anti-missile defense then those only have 5-6 shots before maintenance; so you're not even getting to take many of your low probability shots against incoming missiles. Well, unless they've some low power mode that would let them eke out more shots before going offline pending servicing)

Havenites were better at the tactic? Well, since Shannon is the purveyor of these goods, shouldn’t she have that ability in mind? I hardly think cycle rate will be a problem with 10,000 platforms.

But may we visit Honor’s quote again, poor me is in need of clarification.

In fact, she’s already worked out the quickest way to run up a remote platform tied into the central fire control system of a standard terminus fort.”

Is that an extra platform in-between the graser platform and the forts? That’s how I read it. Something is the size of the 400,000 ton Mycroft or Moriarty platforms. Platforms that feature their own fire control systems. I read Honor’s quote as a Mycroft/Moriarty platform’s fire control is to be tied into the fort’s fire control. That is why upstream I said "possibly another 10,000 platforms." Do I need to worry about indigestion from “misdigestion?”

Theemile provided the relevant information from Jaynes. Haven is better at it because they extensively optimize their main energy mounts for the purpose.

But if they're going for the quickest way to reuse the ex-SLN energy mounts as remote platforms then they're likely reusing as much of the existing ex-SLN mounts as possible. That likely means that they don't have the Havenite extensive optimizations for anti-missile use.

Now Shannon could push for those to be included -- but it'd add a bunch of extra cost and work for what's supposed to be a quick and dirty conversion of otherwise useless hardware into a strengthened terminus defense. And if you're making new optimized mounts to give a minor increase to their (still low) anti-missile capabilities for about the same level of effort you could probably slap on some full-up PDLCs which would give a significantly greater increase in anti-missile capabilities to the platforms.


As for that quote, I'd read that as saying that the remote platform that held the ex-SLN graser was tied into the fort's fire control. I did not read it as there being relay platforms that the forts used to talk to the energy weapons platforms.

penny wrote:IINM the RMN uses a BC grade graser for an antimissile role on at least one of the LACs, per the drunken and as of lately drunker wiki.

tlb wrote:I believe that is correct, in fact I think that graser have always been a part of the anti-missile defense. With the trend to many more numerous grasers on ships, it with probably increase their use in an anti-missile role. I remember reading, a long time ago and have not found it since, that a graser is able to make multiple lower power shots in place of one big full power shot (something that an X-ray laser could not do).

Therefore, if the fire control is available, I would expect that these graser platforms will be used in an anti-missile role; something that a mine could never do.

PS: The threat analysis on incoming missiles occurs prior to the CM fire control and so it is not clear to me that the PDLC's are dependent on the CM controls; therefore I do not understand why a graser in anti-missile mode would need that tie either.

Theemile wrote:When I said "counter missile" there, I meant defense radars and Firecontrol, not necessarily the CM missile system themselves. The defensive systems are separate from offensive shipkiller systems.

From Jayne's RMN:

In beam range, Manticoran ships rarely mount grasers on ships smaller than heavy cruisers, though experimentation with close in fighting doctrines (such as mounting grav lances and energy torpedoes on small ships with high acceleration rates) have been tried. Unlike Havenite beam mounts, Manticoran energy mounts are not extensively optimized for firing at incoming missiles; this is consistent with the doctrinal shift of trying to kill laser heads before they reach detonation range, and the general emphasis on countermissiles.

Please note: this is a 1905 comment, and the RMN has doubled down of PDLCs later in the series. The Sag-C for-ex had 24 PDLCs clusters in each broadside. as mentioned in UH, after the first Flight, these original 8 emitter clusters were replaced in new construction with 12 emitter clusters, with each emitter having a cycle time 50% faster than the earlier ones. This easily gives the SAG-C more countermissile capabilities than pre-war SDs.

I could not find the text in the books through Mission of Honor, so I will have to physically read the later books. I have found the first hint in chapter 16 of A Rising Thunder where they are wargaming the approaching confrontation with Filareta:

Some of those shipkillers locked on to LAC's (or tried to, at any rate) when the LACs' impeller signatures blocked their lines of sight to the original targets. At their enormous velocities, their new victims had only seconds to defend themselves, and point defense clusters spat coherent light with frantic speed. Fortunately for the Katanas and Shrikes, current-generation Manticoran and Grayson LAC's were extraordinarily difficult targets, and "only" sixty-three were destroyed. Their surviving consorts spun, yawing through a hundred and eighty degrees to bring their laser clusters and Shrikes' energy armaments to bear. Anti-ship missiles' terminal attack maneuvers were designed to use their wedges to protect them from their targets' energy weapons as they scorched in on their final attack runs. The SLN had given virtually no thought to evading fire from astern, however, and in a handful of seconds before they swept out of the LACs' range, another thousand shipkillers were blown out of space.

This is the paragraph after the one where the LAC's fire their CM missiles. I had to type this by hand, so there might be minor typing errors, but the part about the Shrikes using their energy weapons, in addition to the laser clusters is clear.

Jonathan_S wrote:As for that quote, I'd read that as saying that the remote platform that held the ex-SLN graser was tied into the fort's fire control. I did not read it as there being relay platforms that the forts used to talk to the energy weapons platforms.

That is how I read it also, the "platform" in Honor's quote is the one containing the graser. However, even though she does not say it, won't the fort's fire control now include such things as Keyhole and Mycroft to assist in the shoals of system defense pods and so on?

Theemile wrote:When I said "counter missile" there, I meant defense radars and Firecontrol, not necessarily the CM missile system themselves. The defensive systems are separate from offensive shipkiller systems.

From Jayne's RMN:

In beam range, Manticoran ships rarely mount grasers on ships smaller than heavy cruisers, though experimentation with close in fighting doctrines (such as mounting grav lances and energy torpedoes on small ships with high acceleration rates) have been tried. Unlike Havenite beam mounts, Manticoran energy mounts are not extensively optimized for firing at incoming missiles; this is consistent with the doctrinal shift of trying to kill laser heads before they reach detonation range, and the general emphasis on countermissiles.

Please note: this is a 1905 comment, and the RMN has doubled down of PDLCs later in the series. The Sag-C for-ex had 24 PDLCs clusters in each broadside. as mentioned in UH, after the first Flight, these original 8 emitter clusters were replaced in new construction with 12 emitter clusters, with each emitter having a cycle time 50% faster than the earlier ones. This easily gives the SAG-C more countermissile capabilities than pre-war SDs.

tlb wrote:I could not find the text in the books through Mission of Honor, so I will have to physically read the later books. I have found the first hint in chapter 16 of A Rising Thunder where they are wargaming the approaching confrontation with Filareta:

Some of those shipkillers locked on to LAC's (or tried to, at any rate) when the LACs' impeller signatures blocked their lines of sight to the original targets. At their enormous velocities, their new victims had only seconds to defend themselves, and point defense clusters spat coherent light with frantic speed. Fortunately for the Katanas and Shrikes, current-generation Manticoran and Grayson LAC's were extraordinarily difficult targets, and "only" sixty-three were destroyed. Their surviving consorts spun, yawing through a hundred and eighty degrees to bring their laser clusters and Shrikes' energy armaments to bear. Anti-ship missiles' terminal attack maneuvers were designed to use their wedges to protect them from their targets' energy weapons as they scorched in on their final attack runs. The SLN had given virtually no thought to evading fire from astern, however, and in a handful of seconds before they swept out of the LACs' range, another thousand shipkillers were blown out of space.

This is the paragraph after the one where the LAC's fire their CM missiles. I had to type this by hand, so there might be minor typing errors, but the part about the Shrikes using their energy weapons, in addition to the laser clusters is clear.

Interesting catch. As I said, the previous quotes were from 1905 and reflecting that doctrine from pre-war. Your quote shows how the RMN doctrine was evolving throughout that Darwinian war. However, were the shipborn graser mounts being updated was well? We can hope so, but I don't remember seeing any discussion of it - however, I did miss this. The Shrike Graser could have been used due to the LAC's smaller size and a LAC's inherent agility, and thus the ability to orient the graser onto the threat vector by aligning the entire craft. If shipborne graser mounts do not have good cross-field traverse capability, they would be less useful in the antimissile role - they simply can't do the careful tracking necessary to lock on and track fast moving targets, and aim far enough off access to target something not right in front of them. And if the RMN didn't plan on using those weapons in that fashion, they might not have spent the money on mounts with such tracking capability. Remember, Grasers were the Carronades in the Age of Sail analogy, and while "aimed", they were designed stick out a ship to hit another big ship a quarter mile away...when it was directly abreast of you.

Newer RMN construction may have the correct mounts to reflect shifting doctrine. The SLN fleets... probably did not...

You see similar issues on PTZ (motorized, remote controlled Point Tilt Zoom) cameras, the same motorized tracking hardware in a 4x camera doesn't work as well in a 20 or 30x camera - when zooming in, you need more precise motion and many cameras use stepper motors which, while giving you accurate motion, sometimes have too large of a step to control the camera accurately at a distance causing it to jump in steps - steps not seen when the cmaera is zoomed out. Alternately, camera control optimized for fine motions can't track fast moving objects well, as the camera motions are set too slow and don't allow fast enough reactions. The motor type, gearing type, and variable speed feedback controls are all important and need to be optimized for your use. (Pro tip: Don't skimp on your camera control systems. You get what you pay for. That $300 conference camera you found on Amazon isn't used by the professionals for more than 1 reason)

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:As for that quote, I'd read that as saying that the remote platform that held the ex-SLN graser was tied into the fort's fire control. I did not read it as there being relay platforms that the forts used to talk to the energy weapons platforms.

That is how I read it also, the "platform" in Honor's quote is the one containing the graser. However, even though she does not say it, won't the fort's fire control now include such things as Keyhole and Mycroft to assist in the shoals of system defense pods and so on?

I believe the modern forts have Keyhole II (or some derivative) to give them FTL control of Apollo.


Mycroft though I'm less sure of. It would depend on how much defensive depth they were given -- keeping in mind that that extra defensive depth is likely wasted for them.

Even without a Mycroft relay the normal Mk23E can sustain an FTL control link for at least 4 light-minutes (73 million km) and someone attacking the Junction is almost certainly going to emerge from hyper much closer than that.

Note that there was talk of developing a system defense variants of the Mk23; which was expected to have a somewhat longer ranged FTL control link and possibly a 4th drive to allow a 0.8c coast followed by cross range maneuvering. But I don't recall confirmation that those ever got built and deployed. Still, given that an enemy is likely to emerge well within the FTL range of a normal Mk23E it is kind of irrelevant whether the Junction defenses have an even greater FTL control range.

At the same time the Junction is much too far out to be useful for firing down the backside of anybody attacking the inner system. Even if they had the 4-drive system defense MDMs any missile fired from the Junction would require nearly 9 hours of flight time to reach the inner system; and if they had the normal 3-drive MDMs it'd take 13 hours!

So there seems little reason to deploy Mycroft relays to better engage enemies at distances they're very exceedingly unlikely to ever appear at. (But that doesn't mean that the RMN didn't go ahead and place at least one layer of such relays around the Junction anyway <shrug>)

Theemile wrote:Your quote shows how the RMN doctrine was evolving throughout that Darwinian war. However, were the shipborn graser mounts being updated was well? We can hope so, but I don't remember seeing any discussion of it - however, I did miss this. The Shrike Graser could have been used due to the LAC's smaller size and a LAC's inherent agility, and thus the ability to orient the graser onto the threat vector by aligning the entire craft. If shipborne graser mounts do not have good cross-field traverse capability, they would be less useful in the antimissile role - they simply can't do the careful tracking necessary to lock on and track fast moving targets, and aim far enough off access to target something not right in front of them. And if the RMN didn't plan on using those weapons in that fashion, they might not have spent the money on mounts with such tracking capability. Remember, Grasers were the Carronades in the Age of Sail analogy, and while "aimed", they were designed stick out a ship to hit another big ship a quarter mile away...when it was directly abreast of you.

Newer RMN construction may have the correct mounts to reflect shifting doctrine. The SLN fleets... probably did not...

It is my understanding that it is the gravity lensing that does the final aiming of the graser (or laser) beam, otherwise you would have to adjust the position of the ship (since the gun ports might be fixed or difficult to adjust). Here is Hexapuma "running" out her grasers in Shadow of Saganami:

Chapter 24 wrote:HMS Hexapuma's impeller wedge snapped abruptly to full power. Senior Chief Clary's joystick went hard over, and the heavy cruiser snarled around to starboard in a six-hundred-gravity, hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Her sidewalls snapped into existence; tethered EW drones popped out to port and starboard; her energy weapons ran out, locking their gravity lenses to the edges of the sidewalls' "gun ports"; and radar and lidar lashed the two Havenite ships like savage whips.

Jonathan_S wrote:Note that there was talk of developing a system defense variants of the Mk23; which was expected to have a somewhat longer ranged FTL control link and possibly a 4th drive to allow a 0.8c coast followed by cross range maneuvering. But I don't recall confirmation that those ever got built and deployed. Still, given that an enemy is likely to emerge well within the FTL range of a normal Mk23E it is kind of irrelevant whether the Junction defenses have an even greater FTL control range.

Here is the description from Storm from the Shadows:

Chapter 12 wrote:"This is the system-defense variant, the Mark 23-D, for the moment, although it's probably going to end up redesignated the Mark 25. It's basically an elongated Mark 23 to accommodate both a fourth impeller drive and longer lasing rods with more powerful grav focusing to push the directed yield still higher. Aside from the grav units and laser rods, this is all off-the-shelf hardware, so production shouldn't be a problem, although at the moment the ship-launched system has priority.

"With the Apollo missile itself—we've officially designated the ship-launched version the Mark 23-E, partly in an attempt to convince anyone who hears about it that it's only an attack bird upgrade—" the cursor moved to the third missile "—the situation's a bit more complicated. As I say, it's an entirely new design, and we're looking at some bottlenecks in getting it into volume production. The system-defense variant—the Mark 23-F—is another all-new design. Aside from the drives and the fusion bottle, we had to start with a blank piece of paper in each case, and we hit some snags getting the new transceiver squared away. We're on top of those, now, but we're still only beginning to ramp up production. The 23-F is lagging behind the 23-E, mostly because we've tweaked the transceiver's sensitivity even higher in light of the longer anticipated engagement ranges, which increased volume requirements more dramatically than we'd expected, but even the Echo model is coming off the lines more slowly than we'd like.

In At All Costs, they were due to be deployed to various system forts, but were not yet in place when Haven attacked Manticore.

In Mission of Honor, they were being deployed just before the Oyster Bay attack. It is likely that moving production to Beowulf meant that only the shipborne version was being manufactured, the Apollo missiles fired in defense of Beowulf in UH were all 3 stage (so not the system defense variant). Here is a remark about the Lynx Terminal:

Chapter 18 wrote:"Hamish is right about that, Your Majesty," he said. "We've got all but one of the forts fully online now. And we've got Apollo system-defense birds deployed in depth to cover them. In fact, we were planning on recalling Jessup Blaine from Lynx to refit his pod-layers with Keyhole-Two and Apollo."

"So you and Hamish are both confident the Lynx Terminus could hold off seventy-one superdreadnoughts if it had to?"

Jonathan_S wrote:(And if you're talking about using the platforms being build with ex-SLN grasers for anti-missile defense then those only have 5-6 shots before maintenance; so you're not even getting to take many of your low probability shots against incoming missiles. Well, unless they've some low power mode that would let them eke out more shots before going offline pending servicing)

If you're going to use them as defensive weapons against opponents coming through the wormhole, given the range of the SLN grasers, they would be deployed between the forts and the exit points for each lane. They don't have to be actually fouling the lane(s) they can be just the path of the lane or even also just around and outside the parameter of the exit point so those could be taking shot on the stern of exiting ships. In general, it seems unlikely that a ship attacking though a wormhole would be firing missiles before it got at least minimal sensor info about where the defenders were at the time they come though so missile defense use would be low. Unlikely the same graders deployed on the lanes would be in useful range of missiles coming at the forts from any other direction.

Also consider what you are going to deploy the SLN grasers in. You take all the equipment needed to operate them along with power supply and gravity sense gear and it's not going to be small. You probably build a single graser platform more like a pod with attitude controls etc and be able to shift the fire vector of the graser to whatever you needed it to be to engage targets within range. It also gives you options as how you move them so shifting individual pods out of lane deployment for maintenance beyond servicing the graser power packs. Depends on how much movement capability you give them. If you decide you want to put any in any kind of ranged array outboard from the junction forts you can still do things like cover routes from the junction to various installations like wearhoused and repair stations. They will be relatively small and unless broadcasting potentially invisible to commercial shipping or anybody doing long range surveillance of the wormhole.