Ship-Killer Missiles

[Chaos]

I´ve been thinking, due to several discussions on what can or cannot harm a capital ship, about what kind of innovative ideas there might be that could possibly change the tactical status quo.

One thing I came up with is a fairly radical idea. Design an unmanned small craft, either one just barely big enough to carry the smallest vehicle weapon type meson gun, or the smallest viable small craft with the biggest such meson gun that can be crammed inside.
These small craft would still be relatively cheap, probably even cheaper than fighters. They would be launched by smaller warships in considerable numbers - maybe from "missile carriers" that are little more than hangar space and launch facilities. Hell, a mid-sized warship could carry an awful lot of these things externally with only a modest reduction in jump and maneuver performance.

Then, swarms of these things would fly towards the target, start firing their meson guns as soon as they are in range, and continue until they are destroyed by point defenses, collide with their targets, or fly past them.

Vehicle weapons do not do much damage to starships, but they are small enough to be install in a very small craft, and since meson guns ignore all armor, they should be able to do internal damage even to the biggest capial ships. They probably will not destroy anything due to internal structure damage, but they should be able to cause critical hits, degrading the combat effectiveness of a capital ship, or maybe even crippling or destroying it if they hit something really vulnerable.

I don´t have any rules sets with me right now, so I cannot do the math, but I think this sounds just crazy enough to maybe work.

 

[Plankowner]

Bigger and better warheads.

Antimatter warheads should be experimental, but possible by TL 15. The biggest problem would be creation of the antimatter and then containment, but with microgravity control and cheap fusion power, it should be possible.

Antimatter warheads could be 10 times more powerful than an equivalent Fusion warhead (maybe even more).

 

[robject]

One thing I came up with is a fairly radical idea. Design an unmanned small craft, either one just barely big enough to carry the smallest vehicle weapon type meson gun, or the smallest viable small craft with the biggest such meson gun that can be crammed inside.

Something akin to this was done in the 80s with Eurisko, which was a computer program that swamped Trillion Credit Squadron tournaments by building a huge number of ships just large enough to field a forest of meson spines. Easy-to-kill ships, but you can't take all of them out the first round, and meanwhile they've killed your fleet. Very annoying.

And as Plank suggests, your solution also touches upon the "torpedo" concept -- design a (big) missile powerful enough to penetrate the defenses of a dreadnought.

 

[mike wightman]

One problem with a battlefield meson missile I can think of is it would't penetrate even the lowest level meson screen.

 

[Chaos]

One problem with a battlefield meson missile I can think of is it would't penetrate even the lowest level meson screen.

Then develop a "meson warhead" for the missile that is a one-shot (literally) warhead powered by a fusion bomb, analogous to the X-ray laser.

Something akin to this was done in the 80s with Eurisko, which was a computer program that swamped Trillion Credit Squadron tournaments by building a huge number of ships just large enough to field a forest of meson spines. Easy-to-kill ships, but you can't take all of them out the first round, and meanwhile they've killed your fleet. Very annoying.

It would be a very short-ranged weapon, even more so since such a tiny "ship" can´t mount targeting computers for its weapon and thus has to get relatively close to have any chance of hitting anything. As a counter-measure, capital ships would have to mount an increased number of missile defence weapons, and smaller ships as escorts to increase missile defense weight-of-fire would become a more viable proposition. Since the ship-killer is technically a small craft, not a missile, even the regular three-per-turret missiles could engage it, meaning that its targets can engage it long before it can fire.

 

[spank]

googling Eurisko

I googled Eurisko, and found a rather interesting article about it. Of praticular interest was this bit at the end,

But as with any program, there are always bugs to work out. Sometimes a "mutant" heuristic appears that does little more than continually cause itself to be triggered, creating within the program an infinite loop. During one run, Lenat noticed that the number in the Worth slot of one newly discovered heuristic kept rising, indicating that Eurisko had made a particularly valuable find. As it turned out the heuristic performed no useful function. It simply examined the pool of new concepts, located those with the highest Worth values, and inserted its name in their My Creator slots.

It was a heuristic that, in effect, had learned how to cheat.:rofl:

 

[BillDowns]

Going back to the OP, you mean something like I was proposing in Post #10 of this thread http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=15628

With straight HG 2ed, you could get a 10-ton, maybe smaller, torpedo mounting 3 missle "launchers", beam lasers, or pulse lasers, or 2 plasma or fusion guns, or 1 particle accelerator.

A modified Type S could maybe carry 2 of these. Upping the tonnage to 200 would likely give you 4, possibly 6.

I'll work out some numbers....

<EDIT> If someone who is interested, would design a 100kt, 50kt, and 20kt ships - TL15, I guess - we could try it out in Play By Post. At least, after I get my parts done

 

[spank]

One problem with a battlefield meson missile I can think of is it would't penetrate even the lowest level meson screen.

Not that I really get into ship combat anyway, but what about a MIRV concept, a missle that packs a 3 part warhead, a meson spine, followed by a laser, and then a nuke?

 

[BillDowns]

Here's some HG 2nd torpedoes based on TL 15 with Computer Model 5 and Agility 6;

Warhead Type	Missle	Laser	Plasma	Fusion	PA	PA(barb)
USP Code	3	4	3	5	2	1
Tonnage		17.5	25.5	21.5	24.5	34.5	37.0
Energy Points	4	8	5	6	10	10
Cost		62.56	76.67	68.60	73.64	88.40	91.93

Those are big, expensive torpedoes, and I'm not sure just how well they would work out.


Does this go in this forum or over in Fleet?

 

[sabredog]

What about a small craft hull...say 50 tons...that is bonded superdense several meters thick, with a larger nuclear warhead inside and powered at 6g? The warhead can be protected from shock by the internal gravitics.

Launch the thing and continuously accelerate it until impact. Crash it through the hull and detonate the warhead.

If it goes fast enough then maybe the impact alone would be something to cause a lot of damage to the ship it hits. Kind of like a really big hyper-velocity KEAPER round. They'd be cheap, so you could buy a lot of them and lay them behind mine-layer type ships. Then they could accelerate and swarm the small-ship/missile defenses.

 

[Chaos]

Going back to the OP, you mean something like I was proposing in Post #10 of this thread http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=15628

With straight HG 2ed, you could get a 10-ton, maybe smaller, torpedo mounting 3 missle "launchers", beam lasers, or pulse lasers, or 2 plasma or fusion guns, or 1 particle accelerator.

A modified Type S could maybe carry 2 of these. Upping the tonnage to 200 would likely give you 4, possibly 6.

I'll work out some numbers....

<EDIT> If someone who is interested, would design a 100kt, 50kt, and 20kt ships - TL15, I guess - we could try it out in Play By Post. At least, after I get my parts done

Apparently with "carry" you mean, as part of the design, like regular small craft.

I, on the other hand, was thinking of carrying these things externally, much like L-Hyd Drop Tanks.

 

[BillDowns]

Actually, it doesn't matter. With a turn being 10 minutes, a small torpedo boat could flush it's load-out in one turn.

The sizes I came up with were surprising to me, actually. I now need to design a 2-torpedo and 4-torpedo carrier and see how small I can get them and still have a chance at doing some damage.

LBB2 really does not have a small craft design feature, although I remember someone posting one from a couple of years back. I will have to search for that, too.