Valen123456 wrote: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?
I'm wondering about the point of building these as three separate units that have to be deployed in a 1:1:1 ratio to work, as opposed to a single spider drive pod/bus/super-pod/auto-LAC/whatever.
If it's a matter of deploying them individually and then assembling them outside the ship in space, well, you do get a more flexible time carrying them, but trying to do that under combat conditions just begs for critical failures and enemy interference.
If you carry and launch them all assembled already, then you're carrying and launching something that's exactly the same size and configuration as the single unit alternative, so the single unit alternative would be no less handy and probably a lot better off structurally.
I suppose a massively modular approach may make for fewer "hangar queens", but you're sure to pay too much for that with the connections they need that the single unit alternative would not, and I don't recall any evidence of many standard pods being stuck in the ship for equipment failure, and the rates for full-up LAC's are very low. For that matter, the connections to tie the pod-bits together represent another way to fail, probably more than enough to make up for the interchangeability all on its own.