James Kundert [email removed] wrote
> >This is a good analysis. To tell you the truth, I like the feel of being
> >able to armour my dreadnaughts in proper Fisher fashion.
>
> I'm afraid I don't get the Fisher reference.
Admiral Jackie Fisher was First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty at the turn
of the century, and he invented the all-big-gun battleship -- called the
1st one Deadnaught. (More or less invented, I know about the Italian and
US developments at the time, by it was Dreadnaught that set the standard)
[Now there is a set of titles for Regency fleet command types - First Star Lord]
> But your own paragraph on tactics indicates part of their role:
> Overloading point-defenses and scrubbing surface features. The standard
> missile in TNE is capable of a lot of mayhem, and will scrub surface
> bits off of _any_ ship. The more ships (of any size) you've got firing
> these things at the enemy, the less capable the enemy will be to
> respond.
Agreed. Also, I notice that Meson screens and Nuclear Dampers have antennas
in their designs. If I destroy those antennas, do I get a prize?
> The levels of armor described in Steven M Bonneville's
> ([email removed]) post almost, BUT NOT QUITE, return
> us to the days of MT, when anything without a meson gun was harmless
> above a certain level. In TNE, with all of a ship's surface features,
> it is quite possible to get a mission kill without penetrating the
> armor. Nothing is completely invulnerable.
>
Actually, my problem with MT was the same as my problem with HG -- the use of
weapons as damage absorbers. It was like covering the Iowa with 50-cal MG's
and then saying you had to knock them all out before you could take out a
big gun. The new rules suit me a lot better.
I don't think 2000 is going to turn out to be that much armour once we get going
at ship design. We probably need some sort of structure to compare apples and
apples, like TCS provided for high guard. Perhaps we should be working on
designs in a TCS environment -- say TL14, unlimitted pilots.
> >3c Cross Sectional Area 2.25e22 (a diameter of 8e7 km !!)
> ...
>
> Even the Ringworld Meteor Defense System is only twice this diameter,
> and that's only if you consider the Ringworld itself as the barrel...
>
Its only about 260 light seconds! (Maybe I could just hit the planet
upside the head with it :-) ).
and [email removed] (Steven M Bonneville) wrote
>
[snip]
> Well, as I mentioned there might be a possibility of using them in very
> large numbers as nuclear missile launchers, and try for a direct hit on
> the battleship. Somehow, I doubt even factor 2000 armor would take well
> to having a nuke go off next to it. Of course, the target solution is
> fairly simple once the missiles get that close, so you'd have to fire
> a *lot* of them and concentrate your fire on one enemy target.
>
I like the idea of a contact nuke, but I guess our friends at GDW don't. I
have not done the calculations for the energy in the wave-front of an H bomb
and I really must -- I am not sure that you would have to get all that close.
[snip]
> power requirements of such an anti-missile laser would be. Arming the
> little fleet escorts with "pea-shooter" meson weapons would probably be
> a better bet if you're trying for serious internal damage.
Agreed.
Les Howie
Prograph International