Spider Pods

So, after reading some of the thread on Lenny Det tactics, I thought of a new idea. I'm not sure if this has been brought up before, but what do you guys think of a taking a pod full of missiles and giving it a spider drive. This would let the LDs drop the pods, then go in one direction while the pod goes in another. One weakness of the LD that was mentioned was that the missile traces would give the defender some area to search even if they didn't localize the LD completely. This spider pod would widen that basket considerably. It would also grant additional range to the missiles, because the pod could head towards the defender before launching. I think this would lead to a lot of interesting tactics. What are your opinions?

Nice idea, but I don't think it would be practical. By the time you'd put in the spider drive and the necessary reactor or capacitors to power it, the pod would be huge relative to its missile load, which would mean a huge reduction in the number of missiles and pods you could carry on the same size of ship. Not to mention that the pod launch system might well not be compatible with conventional pods, given the difference in size and shape.

Dafmeister wrote:Nice idea, but I don't think it would be practical. By the time you'd put in the spider drive and the necessary reactor or capacitors to power it, the pod would be huge relative to its missile load, which would mean a huge reduction in the number of missiles and pods you could carry on the same size of ship. Not to mention that the pod launch system might well not be compatible with conventional pods, given the difference in size and shape.

All true. Pods aren't much more than weak launchers with the missiles loaded, tiny beacons for recovery, and the systems to launch as instructed. "Add" a drive to that and you've got something much, much larger - more of a stripped-down, automated LAC than anything else - which isn't going to suit a podlayer or deploying lots of missiles rapidly.

That's not to say that something of the sort is necessarily impossible or across-the-board useless. But it's a very different critter.

JeffEngel wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:Nice idea, but I don't think it would be practical. By the time you'd put in the spider drive and the necessary reactor or capacitors to power it, the pod would be huge relative to its missile load, which would mean a huge reduction in the number of missiles and pods you could carry on the same size of ship. Not to mention that the pod launch system might well not be compatible with conventional pods, given the difference in size and shape.

All true. Pods aren't much more than weak launchers with the missiles loaded, tiny beacons for recovery, and the systems to launch as instructed. "Add" a drive to that and you've got something much, much larger - more of a stripped-down, automated LAC than anything else - which isn't going to suit a podlayer or deploying lots of missiles rapidly.

That's not to say that something of the sort is necessarily impossible or across-the-board useless. But it's a very different critter.

Most importantly, MWW has already nixed autonomous, powered pods on several occasions - it is in the pearls.

Theemile wrote:Most importantly, MWW has already nixed autonomous, powered pods on several occasions - it is in the pearls.

There is absolutely no reason what so ever for the pods to be autonomous for this idea to work.

Now the practicality of the idea on the other hand...

quark wrote:So, after reading some of the thread on Lenny Det tactics, I thought of a new idea. I'm not sure if this has been brought up before, but what do you guys think of a taking a pod full of missiles and giving it a spider drive. This would let the LDs drop the pods, then go in one direction while the pod goes in another. One weakness of the LD that was mentioned was that the missile traces would give the defender some area to search even if they didn't localize the LD completely. This spider pod would widen that basket considerably. It would also grant additional range to the missiles, because the pod could head towards the defender before launching. I think this would lead to a lot of interesting tactics. What are your opinions?

You know - having a drive on the pod at all is just a happy additional bit here. If you're invisible and the target is not, if you are free to maneuver as you like, and the target is moving in a fairly predictable fashion, you can just develop a vector such that your released pod will be travelling ballistically - no drive on it required - on a rough intercept course with the target. You're free to wander away from that course afterward, the pod carries on, and fires off the missiles when it's getting close to the target.

In effect, the time in the pod is an initial ballistic component in the missiles' movement toward the target. You'd get a lot more flexibility with a spider drive component there too, and a multi-drive or multi-stage missile with a spider drive component would be great for that. We don't know that the spider drive in any form scales down smaller than the graser torpedo, or how well if at all you could build a variant of it that carries a bunch of missiles instead of the single graser and its systems, or that is itself a stupendous laserhead missile. I have a hunch that something of the sort may be the LD's shipkilling weapon of choice. (Another poster has suggested that being able to maneuver invisibly and nearby may mean a graser torpedo could get a good "graser slice" down the throat or up the kilt on an impeller drive ship. I'd hesitate to be that optimistic in the MAN's case.)

David's comments on powered missile pods can be found at: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/176/1. His main objection was that they would be very large and not very stealthy. But it should be noted that he was talking about pods with impeller drives, not spider drives. A spider drive pod might dispense with some of the objections.

SWM wrote:David's comments on powered missile pods can be found at: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/176/1. His main objection was that they would be very large and not very stealthy. But it should be noted that he was talking about pods with impeller drives, not spider drives. A spider drive pod might dispense with some of the objections.

Since the spider drive doesn't seem to miniaturize very well -- ref: the size of the graser-torps -- I suspect his point about excessive size will stand even if they're totally invisible.

Weird Harold wrote:

SWM wrote:David's comments on powered missile pods can be found at: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/176/1. His main objection was that they would be very large and not very stealthy. But it should be noted that he was talking about pods with impeller drives, not spider drives. A spider drive pod might dispense with some of the objections.

Since the spider drive doesn't seem to miniaturize very well -- ref: the size of the graser-torps -- I suspect his point about excessive size will stand even if they're totally invisible.

The graser torpedo is big, but how much of that is on account of the drive and how much on account of it being a great big honkin' graser that maintains fire for a good three seconds?

Also, if it's a minimum size without being too terribly much of an investment in that total volume, you could simply have very large spider drive missile buses with lots of missiles each. (Assuming that the non-drive portions of the thing support piling missiles in about as well as they support piling the graser and its associated systems in.)

The resulting thing is certainly going to be a lot larger than a typical missile pod and not interchangeable with them, so not the sort of thing you would use the same way, but it could for all we quite know serve a different useful purpose.

In fact - given that the Leonard Detweilers can carry and fire graser torpedoes internally, and that that's not likely a capability that they just picked up casually or as an accident, and that another poster has mentioned that the MAN was apparently uncertain that the graser torpedoes would work well enough for certain aspects of Oyster Bay, I'm inclined to think that a primary weapon on the LD's is something other than a graser torpedo that is still carried and fired much like it: a different weapon on a practically interchangeable platform. That could very well be a spider drive bus for missiles (themselves of impeller drives presumably, but we can't yet rule out with certainty spider drives). Alternatively, it could be a spider drive graser-torpedo-sized laserhead supermissile - I can't think of any reason to suspect that's not within their capabilities.

Lots of people have already pointed out how impractical self propelled pods are currently due to the numerous technical troubles they face. That does not mean that they might not be one of some future technical developments further down the road, just that they are not practical enough to be viable in the series present time frame.

Regarding the spider drive however, how about this alternative? You create a pod with a single "keel" of spider drive nodes, then mate the pod up with at least three other spider pods around a scaffolding, or have built in physical connectors, which holds them together. Other space consuming systems like power, AI control nodes, and sensor packages could then be distributed around the pods i.e. one carries the power systems, one the AI control, and the other the sensors. This would mean that each one would be immobile on their own, but it allows you to build up a reasonable salvo from a single "trio" without having to pack all the same systems into a single pod and so oversize it. You could then build up trains of these "trio"'s of spider pods that maneuver like a single ship, with multiple redundant variants to fall back on in case of mishaps during the travel time. Then when they are ready to fire, they disengage from one another, a little thruster push to separate and line up, then launch their missiles when in range.

Thoughts?