macfanpro wrote:I know that the movies aren't really "tech canon," but they're the only thing that we really have to tell us anything about the missile guidance laws. Some books even talk about missiles getting into tail-chase situations with fighters (I can't make any citations as to this, unfortunately), so I think it's a reasonable inference that SW missiles have tail-chase and preprogrammed trajectory guidance laws. They might have pro-nav guidance, or even ZEM, but I've never seen evidence that suggests that they do have those modes.
Unfortunately, since there is no way that a typical Star Wars author has ever heard of guidance schemes more advanced than tail-chase, it really is hard to say. I for one thing it far more likely that they'd "really" use a sane guidance scheme that our authors don't know about.
Hell, I bet if you polled most people, they'd think that's how REAL missiles work. It's certainly how they normally work in video games and movies and such, which are the limit of normal people's exposure.
...In what respect would improving the fire control be even helpful here?
It wouldn't, and I'm not saying that FCS improvements would have made it any better (except for PD improvements with the trench turrets, which has been covered in detail). What I am saying is that they had a lot of money and smart people, and they used that to make the bits that go bang, rather than the software that backs it up. I'm trying to show that there is bang innovation happening in the DS systems, but not software innovation.
Fair enough- but in the case of the Death Star, that software innovation would not contribute to the Death Star's ability to perform its mission, and might add extra complexity and delays to an already complex and delayed project.
In real life, each generation of weapons has more advanced software because we live in an era when computers are rapidly improving, and where we ambitiously demand much more of our computers now than we did 10 years ago, or 10 years before that.
In Star Wars, this is mostly not the case, and there may be good reasons for that (see my speculations on how complicated the programming has gotten).
Actually, this is not necessarily true. For example, take the F-35 fighter. The biggest single thing that makes it an advance over the F-somethingteens it replaces isn't stealth, it's software. The F-35 has the computers and software to take in more data on what the enemy is doing, track more targets, engage more targets, use a more complex network of sensors, than any fighter which has gone before.
Unfortunately, the software coding and systems integration is also the most complex part of the project, and certain very specific problems with how the software and hardware interact are delaying production even further.
I think that we're violently agreeing here. The F-35 is a primarily software advance, where hardware didn't change much, and I don't dispute that. What I'm trying to say is that if the software doesn't change, the hardware probably doesn't change, either.
That is almost certainly NOT a true inference in general. You're taking a Moore's Law-driven exponential growth in computer ability in real life, correlating it to a much slower rate of advance in engineering and material science, and assuming that holds in general.
My guess is, it probably doesn't; we just happen to still be impressed by microchips because we only just invented them a generation or two ago. Once you hit the upper limit of the complexity of software human programmers can create, maintain, understand, and manipulate in less than decades of time, that limit is not going to flex very much even as the engineering technology advances drastically.
Looking at your F-35 example again, you're saying that software changed, hardware didn't change. I'm not saying that software changes iff hardware changes, I'm saying that no software changes => no hardware changes. I haven't been able to find a counterexample to that yet.
The Dreadnought Revolution?
You live in an era when software is changing and hardware is changing. There is a correlation. But correlation does not imply causation; software changes do not cause advances in hardware design, and therefore "no software change" can coexist with "hardware change" in military equipment.
I'm not talking about C&C software (on SW ships, they're really closer to SCADA systems, but I digress), which are giant, complicated, and necessarily mostly monolithic. Instead, I'm talking about the software on the smaller-scale systems, like the gun-local FCS on the Lancers, or the guidance laws on missiles. These systems aren't as monolithic as those found on capital ships and the like, and are (hopefully) reasonably modular.
Essentially true, although galaxy only knows how complicated the targeting software for a missile gets in a setting with Star Wars's bizarro EW environment.
Yes, and I don't dispute that. I'm only looking at much smaller scale projects here, like the missile systems. To use a real world example, look at the versions of AMRAAMS, where the onboard software has change substantially. These didn't take anything like as long to do as the F-35 did, but we don't see any changes in similarly sized systems in the SW universe. The same missiles with the same FCSs are being used in the Old Republic as in the New, and I think this is telling how fast software is changing.
True. On the other hand, it also suggests that whatever you or I may think, the low hanging fruit has already been picked. If it is easy to program missiles that would fly to where the enemy was 'going to be' instead of where they are right now, then people ARE already doing that.
So either we say "they aren't doing that, therefore it's not easy to program missiles to do that," or we say "it's easy to do that, so they must be doing it no matter WHAT we see on the screen." I don't think you can say "it's easy, but they're clearly not doing it, so they must all be idiots."
Actually, this is not necessarily true. For example, take the F-35 fighter. The biggest single thing that makes it an advance over the F-somethingteens it replaces isn't stealth, it's software. The F-35 has the computers and software to take in more data on what the enemy is doing, track more targets, engage more targets, use a more complex network of sensors, than any fighter which has gone before.
Unfortunately, the software coding and systems integration is also the most complex part of the project, and certain very specific problems with how the software and hardware interact are delaying production even further.
I think that we're violently agreeing here. The F-35 is a primarily software advance, where hardware didn't change much, and I don't dispute that. What I'm trying to say is that if the software doesn't change, the hardware probably doesn't change, either.
That is almost certainly NOT a true inference in general. You're taking a Moore's Law-driven exponential growth in computer ability in real life, correlating it to a much slower rate of advance in engineering and material science, and assuming that holds in general.
My guess is, it probably doesn't; we just happen to still be impressed by microchips because we only just invented them a generation or two ago. Once you hit the upper limit of the complexity of software human programmers can create, maintain, understand, and manipulate in less than decades of time, that limit is not going to flex very much even as the engineering technology advances drastically.
Consider a world with no software advances. Does it make sense to innovate in computer hardware, if your existing hardware is already perfectly good at running your stagnant software? I don't think so, I'd think that I'd look into investing into other fields.
Looking at your F-35 example again, you're saying that software changed, hardware didn't change. I'm not saying that software changes iff hardware changes, I'm saying that no software changes => no hardware changes. I haven't been able to find a counterexample to that yet.
The Dreadnought Revolution?
They didn't have software then (the closest I can find is the C&C structure, and that didn't change), so it's hard for me to draw parallels. Can you explain a bit more?
You live in an era when software is changing and hardware is changing. There is a correlation. But correlation does not imply causation; software changes do not cause advances in hardware design, and therefore "no software change" can coexist with "hardware change" in military equipment.
But does it make sense to pay for the new computers, if the old ones work just as well as the new ones? I don't think so, and if software doesn't change, that's the situation you'll end up in.
I'm not talking about C&C software (on SW ships, they're really closer to SCADA systems, but I digress), which are giant, complicated, and necessarily mostly monolithic. Instead, I'm talking about the software on the smaller-scale systems, like the gun-local FCS on the Lancers, or the guidance laws on missiles. These systems aren't as monolithic as those found on capital ships and the like, and are (hopefully) reasonably modular.
Essentially true, although galaxy only knows how complicated the targeting software for a missile gets in a setting with Star Wars's bizarro EW environment.
For reasons of avoiding programmer head-hurt, it would only make sense that ECCM and FCS/guidance are discrete software components. The SW ECCM is likely very odd, but I don't see why the targeting systems themselves would be very different from any other guidance system. They merely take input from sensors and ECCM (treating them as black boxes), and produce a maneuvering vector.
Yes, and I don't dispute that. I'm only looking at much smaller scale projects here, like the missile systems. To use a real world example, look at the versions of AMRAAMS, where the onboard software has change substantially. These didn't take anything like as long to do as the F-35 did, but we don't see any changes in similarly sized systems in the SW universe. The same missiles with the same FCSs are being used in the Old Republic as in the New, and I think this is telling how fast software is changing.
True. On the other hand, it also suggests that whatever you or I may think, the low hanging fruit has already been picked. If it is easy to program missiles that would fly to where the enemy was 'going to be' instead of where they are right now, then people ARE already doing that.
So either we say "they aren't doing that, therefore it's not easy to program missiles to do that," or we say "it's easy to do that, so they must be doing it no matter WHAT we see on the screen." I don't think you can say "it's easy, but they're clearly not doing it, so they must all be idiots."
Well, IMO, the SW populace distrusts automation and computers in general far more than is rational. The Confederacy was only scratching the surface of what's possible with automated systems, and they were able to force-multiply with them very effectively. ECR himself has talked about Von Neumann machines being banned via societal pressures. Von Neumann machines could have won the war for the Confederacy, as well as being hugely useful commercially. In a civilization able to make them easily, the only reason for not using them is that they're stupid in oddly targeted ways. If they're scared of the computers taking over, it's a reasonable extension to try to avoid putting computers in mostly autonomous control of weapon systems.
To sum up my point there, I think that for unknown reasons, SW is very skeptical (and IMO, stupidly so) when it comes to attaching computers to things. While their fear of attaching it to manufacturing equipment has been demonstrated, it seems only logical that they would also fear attaching it to weapons without a lot of human oversight.
macfanpro wrote:Consider a world with no software advances. Does it make sense to innovate in computer hardware, if your existing hardware is already perfectly good at running your stagnant software? I don't think so, I'd think that I'd look into investing into other fields.
I quite agree- but I thought you meant "hardware" in the sense of things other than just computers. Like, say, the physical materials that go into a ship, or the weapons layout it uses.
Looking at your F-35 example again, you're saying that software changed, hardware didn't change. I'm not saying that software changes iff hardware changes, I'm saying that no software changes => no hardware changes. I haven't been able to find a counterexample to that yet.
The Dreadnought Revolution?
They didn't have software then (the closest I can find is the C&C structure, and that didn't change), so it's hard for me to draw parallels. Can you explain a bit more?
That's kind of my point. We live in the Information Revolution, so it's easy for us to assume that all technological advances revolve around changes in the way people manipulate information, and that no change in information-handling equals technical stagnation in other areas, not just in information-handling.
When you talked about "hardware" I thought you meant more than just computer technology; if you meant to restrict your comments solely to the physical power of computers, then many of my comments do not apply. It's obvious that if you have computers good enough to build humanoid robots, you're probably never going to need to improve your hardware at all for any other purpose, including software improvement- because most applications won't need more processing power than is found inside C3PO's head anyway.
True. On the other hand, it also suggests that whatever you or I may think, the low hanging fruit has already been picked. If it is easy to program missiles that would fly to where the enemy was 'going to be' instead of where they are right now, then people ARE already doing that.
So either we say "they aren't doing that, therefore it's not easy to program missiles to do that," or we say "it's easy to do that, so they must be doing it no matter WHAT we see on the screen." I don't think you can say "it's easy, but they're clearly not doing it, so they must all be idiots."
Well, IMO, the SW populace distrusts automation and computers in general far more than is rational...
Yes, but that distrust does not extend to "program a missile to fly to where the enemy will probably show up, instead of where it is right now." Or at least there's no evidence of that.
Hence my point: that we shouldn't assume that people in the Star Wars galaxy are 'really' doing things for stupid or ignorant reasons, just because stupid or ignorant filmmakers show them doing things that are otherwise hard to explain.
Otherwise we're trapped in assuming that ALL fictional missiles are tail-chase and ONLY in real life could that ever exist, simply because virtually no makers of fiction know any better in real life.
macfanpro wrote:Consider a world with no software advances. Does it make sense to innovate in computer hardware, if your existing hardware is already perfectly good at running your stagnant software? I don't think so, I'd think that I'd look into investing into other fields.
I quite agree- but I thought you meant "hardware" in the sense of things other than just computers. Like, say, the physical materials that go into a ship, or the weapons layout it uses.
I've generally been referring to that as "things that go bang," but the confusion is understandable. Remember the original context - I was saying that the main innovation is SW is related to the mechanical components of systems, rather than the computers that control those components. My original point was that it's likely that these computers have become cheaply available (they haven't changed in centuries, it seems, so presumably the manufacturers have found a cheap way to make them), so hypermissiles wouldn't incur large costs from their electronics, rather being expensive thanks to their drives and reactors.
That's kind of my point. We live in the Information Revolution, so it's easy for us to assume that all technological advances revolve around changes in the way people manipulate information, and that no change in information-handling equals technical stagnation in other areas, not just in information-handling.
Ah, so we were busily misunderstanding each other for a long time.
When you talked about "hardware" I thought you meant more than just computer technology; if you meant to restrict your comments solely to the physical power of computers, then many of my comments do not apply. It's obvious that if you have computers good enough to build humanoid robots, you're probably never going to need to improve your hardware at all for any other purpose, including software improvement- because most applications won't need more processing power than is found inside C3PO's head anyway.
Although, we're probably looking at one of those applications. SW ECM is really, really good, and the classic way out for ECCM is add more computers. If that path's been ruled out by now, the computers that are being used in ECCM fits must be top-of-the line.
Well, IMO, the SW populace distrusts automation and computers in general far more than is rational...
Yes, but that distrust does not extend to "program a missile to fly to where the enemy will probably show up, instead of where it is right now." Or at least there's no evidence of that.
Hence my point: that we shouldn't assume that people in the Star Wars galaxy are 'really' doing things for stupid or ignorant reasons, just because stupid or ignorant filmmakers show them doing things that are otherwise hard to explain.
Otherwise we're trapped in assuming that ALL fictional missiles are tail-chase and ONLY in real life could that ever exist, simply because virtually no makers of fiction know any better in real life.
Well, missiles are a bad example thanks to the popular love of tail-chase. I like ECR's idea that we're essentially watching a dramatization, so we can basically put away all of the missile behavior that's seen in the movies.
The rest of it still stands, especially the Lancer FCS. I don't understand why SW software architecture isn't modular enough to allow for more sophisticated gun FCS without substantial changes to the rest of the system. If software is a generational project, it seems like a good idea to make changes to that software pretty easy and modular.
I think the only reason for fitting a FCS that's bad against fighters when compared to other FCS systems onto a dedicated antifighter ship is that there was something else about the better FCS that was distasteful. C-3PO (if reprogrammed) would be more than capable of coordinating those guns, and he wasn't that expensive, so it's probably not cost. The complexity overhead in information handling is already covered, as the guns systems already interface with sensors and ECCM, so all the information needed is already there. The only thing remaining that could be unlikable about improved FCS it seems is that it's an improved FCS, and that there's some upper bound as to what is acceptable in terms of automation of weapons systems.
Another question is why haven't droid fighters stuck around? If you want them to be more independent, use protocol droid like processors and dedicated programming, and you have a fighter that's very nearly as capable as a manned one, if not more so. Either the processors C-3PO used were astronomically expensive (compared to the cost of the fighter), or there's a reason to not make the fighters themselves too smart.
Another possibility is that the Lancer itself is a botched design- which, given how easily they fall to fighter squadrons in the Rogue Squadron novels and elsewhere, is a plausible theory. If there is something fundamentally wrong with the Lancer's fire control, which makes it less than effective at its nominal mission, there might be some other reason why that fault was not corrected.
And, if the Lancer was effective enough to devastate less competentelitehax squadrons than Rogue and Wraith, or at least to have a relatively favourable rate of exchange, taking in the relative industrial capabilities and manpower considerations of the Empire and the Alliance, the establishment might have gone "good enough." If the problem was systemic enough, any planned refits to rectify the issue might have been set back until they could either fix all the issues at once and produce a Mk2, or scrap the whole class and make another hull with lessons learned.
The Starfighter and Dedicated Anti-Starfighter factions of the Imperial Navy were always subordinate to the Big Guns faction, anyway.
Yes, I know my username is an oxyMORON, thankyou for pointing that out, you're very clever.
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Regarding the computer-controlled Lancer guns - ECR proposes at the bottom of this post that turrets are largely computer-compensated: three rings, the outer two of which compensate for the motion of the firing ship, and the base course of the target, and are computer-controlled. The inner ring, which is ideally human-controlled, attempts to predict evasion on/around said base course. Figuring out not just where it is, and where it's pointing, but where it's actually going to be when the shot gets there. It makes sense to me that organic brains would be better at that kind of intelligent anticipation.
Rereading the section from the first arc, it's obvious to the pilot that the turrets were set in "dumb follow" - pure ballistic prediction, so it would look good but not do much. And given that the captain of the Lancer didn't want to knew he wasn't supposed to kill the B-wings, that scene is a bad example.
Lastly, regarding the hypermissiles and point defense - One and Indivisible (the Lucrehulk from the first arc) despite being caught off-guard and with severely degraded point defense, managed to stop about 40% of a 250-torp salvo. Take that as you will.
Lerryn wrote:Regarding the computer-controlled Lancer guns - ECR proposes at the bottom of this post that turrets are largely computer-compensated: three rings, the outer two of which compensate for the motion of the firing ship, and the base course of the target, and are computer-controlled. The inner ring, which is ideally human-controlled, attempts to predict evasion on/around said base course. Figuring out not just where it is, and where it's pointing, but where it's actually going to be when the shot gets there. It makes sense to me that organic brains would be better at that kind of intelligent anticipation.
However, consider the sophistication of other droid systems, like the ones in C3PO. I'd actually say that computers of that sort would be better at predicting targets than the humans, as they can incorporate much more sophisticated physical models for Kalman filtering.
Rereading the section from the first arc, it's obvious to the pilot that the turrets were set in "dumb follow" - pure ballistic prediction, so it would look good but not do much. And given that the captain of the Lancer didn't want to knew he wasn't supposed to kill the B-wings, that scene is a bad example.
Consider the scene from the perspective of the Rebels. They know the fire modes of the Lancers-they've been fired at by enough of them to know by now. Therefore, if Kondrake was using an inferior FCS mode, the Rebels would know that he was, and therefore that he wasn't actually trying to take out the B-wings. On the Imperial side, then, it should have been imperative for him to use the best available FCS mode, so that the Rebels didn't think that he wasn't trying.
Lastly, regarding the hypermissiles and point defense - One and Indivisible (the Lucrehulk from the first arc) despite being caught off-guard and with severely degraded point defense, managed to stop about 40% of a 250-torp salvo. Take that as you will.
I think that this is an indicator of how crap SW missiles are. In an environment where ECM has won, the PD has the ECCM problem, just as the incoming missiles do. I'd expect more losses, then, from soft kills (loss of lock from ECM and maneuvering) than from hard kills (PD). Do the torpedoes have integrated ECM systems like the rRastefoni RKV's did?
Simon_Jester wrote:Another possibility is that the Lancer itself is a botched design- which, given how easily they fall to fighter squadrons in the Rogue Squadron novels and elsewhere, is a plausible theory. If there is something fundamentally wrong with the Lancer's fire control, which makes it less than effective at its nominal mission, there might be some other reason why that fault was not corrected.
I think that this is the only real option, and the same one I was talking about, since I'd argue that using the wrong FCS is a botched design. However, it wouldn't make sense to not fix it, since it's a software change, not one that would require entirely new hardware.
macfanpro wrote:However, consider the sophistication of other droid systems, like the ones in C3PO. I'd actually say that computers of that sort would be better at predicting targets than the humans, as they can incorporate much more sophisticated physical models for Kalman filtering.
Kalman filtering is what you'd use to interpret noisy signals as a 'smooth' stable output- which is something you'd wire into the inputs of whatever makes your fire control decisions, be that a computer or a man.
More generally, you're right that a computer could be built to do the job as well as a human being- assuming that it's simply a matter of predicting evasive maneuvers that can be smoothly predicted, as opposed to quasirandom actions taken by men or machines that raise questions about which heuristic you should even use to pick the target.
Random or quasirandom behaviors are another story. Among other things, because a buggy system for guessing where the enemy will dodge to might be worse than no system at all.
Consider the scene from the perspective of the Rebels. They know the fire modes of the Lancers-they've been fired at by enough of them to know by now. Therefore, if Kondrake was using an inferior FCS mode, the Rebels would know that he was, and therefore that he wasn't actually trying to take out the B-wings. On the Imperial side, then, it should have been imperative for him to use the best available FCS mode, so that the Rebels didn't think that he wasn't trying.
Well, they want to use the best available fire control mode consistent with not actually killing the B-Wings. Since Lancers aren't instant death to every fighter that comes within their gun range, it's fair to say that the Rebels won't be surprised by the B-Wings attacking a Lancer and living to tell the tail. They may be impressed, but not necessarily surprised or suspicious.
macfanpro wrote:However, consider the sophistication of other droid systems, like the ones in C3PO. I'd actually say that computers of that sort would be better at predicting targets than the humans, as they can incorporate much more sophisticated physical models for Kalman filtering.
Kalman filtering is what you'd use to interpret noisy signals as a 'smooth' stable output- which is something you'd wire into the inputs of whatever makes your fire control decisions, be that a computer or a man.
Yes, and in the wild ECM environments in Star Wars, I think that smoothing is the real trick in targeting, since the engagement systems aren't actually that complex.
More generally, you're right that a computer could be built to do the job as well as a human being- assuming that it's simply a matter of predicting evasive maneuvers that can be smoothly predicted, as opposed to quasirandom actions taken by men or machines that raise questions about which heuristic you should even use to pick the target.
Random or quasirandom behaviors are another story. Among other things, because a buggy system for guessing where the enemy will dodge to might be worse than no system at all.
The question I have is: how random is random? I think you'd be surprised at how non-random humans in particular are, and in physical systems random movements very much aren't. There's a reason why against real missiles jinking isn't used much, instead maneuvers designed to foil the specific guidance methodologies are encouraged instead. Targeting systems are just too good at working out what's going to happen next, even with supposedly "random" maneuvering.
Consider the scene from the perspective of the Rebels. They know the fire modes of the Lancers-they've been fired at by enough of them to know by now. Therefore, if Kondrake was using an inferior FCS mode, the Rebels would know that he was, and therefore that he wasn't actually trying to take out the B-wings. On the Imperial side, then, it should have been imperative for him to use the best available FCS mode, so that the Rebels didn't think that he wasn't trying.
Well, they want to use the best available fire control mode consistent with not actually killing the B-Wings. Since Lancers aren't instant death to every fighter that comes within their gun range, it's fair to say that the Rebels won't be surprised by the B-Wings attacking a Lancer and living to tell the tail. They may be impressed, but not necessarily surprised or suspicious.
I'm not talking about the suspiciousness of the Rebels that they survived, I'm talking about their suspiciousness of the Lancer itself, and it's implications onto the crew. The Lancer wanted to kill the B-wings, from the perspective of the Rebels, so it would be reasonable to assume that the systems were being used in their most lethal state. At this point, the Rebels should have a pretty good idea of what the targeting systems onboard the Lancer are, so I think that they'd notice that the Lancer wasn't actually trying as hard as it could to kill the B-wings.
macfanpro wrote:However, consider the sophistication of other droid systems, like the ones in C3PO. I'd actually say that computers of that sort would be better at predicting targets than the humans, as they can incorporate much more sophisticated physical models for Kalman filtering.
Kalman filtering is what you'd use to interpret noisy signals as a 'smooth' stable output- which is something you'd wire into the inputs of whatever makes your fire control decisions, be that a computer or a man.
Yes, and in the wild ECM environments in Star Wars, I think that smoothing is the real trick in targeting, since the engagement systems aren't actually that complex.
More generally, you're right that a computer could be built to do the job as well as a human being- assuming that it's simply a matter of predicting evasive maneuvers that can be smoothly predicted, as opposed to quasirandom actions taken by men or machines that raise questions about which heuristic you should even use to pick the target.
Random or quasirandom behaviors are another story. Among other things, because a buggy system for guessing where the enemy will dodge to might be worse than no system at all.
The question I have is: how random is random? I think you'd be surprised at how non-random humans in particular are, and in physical systems random movements very much aren't. There's a reason why against real missiles jinking isn't used much, instead maneuvers designed to foil the specific guidance methodologies are encouraged instead. Targeting systems are just too good at working out what's going to happen next, even with supposedly "random" maneuvering.
Consider the scene from the perspective of the Rebels. They know the fire modes of the Lancers-they've been fired at by enough of them to know by now. Therefore, if Kondrake was using an inferior FCS mode, the Rebels would know that he was, and therefore that he wasn't actually trying to take out the B-wings. On the Imperial side, then, it should have been imperative for him to use the best available FCS mode, so that the Rebels didn't think that he wasn't trying.
Well, they want to use the best available fire control mode consistent with not actually killing the B-Wings. Since Lancers aren't instant death to every fighter that comes within their gun range, it's fair to say that the Rebels won't be surprised by the B-Wings attacking a Lancer and living to tell the tail. They may be impressed, but not necessarily surprised or suspicious.
I'm not talking about the suspiciousness of the Rebels that they survived, I'm talking about their suspiciousness of the Lancer itself, and it's implications onto the crew. The Lancer wanted to kill the B-wings, from the perspective of the Rebels, so it would be reasonable to assume that the systems were being used in their most lethal state. At this point, the Rebels should have a pretty good idea of what the targeting systems onboard the Lancer are, so I think that they'd notice that the Lancer wasn't actually trying as hard as it could to kill the B-wings.
Something ECR really played up in the Rebel chapters is how stereotyped a view of the Imperials the Rebels have. They actually think the Imps are borderline incompetent, their kit (except heavy metal) sucks and if it didn't they wouldn't know how to use it properly. Thinking a Lancer (which are crap anyway), has a crew who aren't using their gear to its best effect comes a lot easier than thinking the despised enemy are doing something clever.
Machiavelli Jr wrote:
Something ECR really played up in the Rebel chapters is how stereotyped a view of the Imperials the Rebels have. They actually think the Imps are borderline incompetent, their kit (except heavy metal) sucks and if it didn't they wouldn't know how to use it properly. Thinking a Lancer (which are crap anyway), has a crew who aren't using their gear to its best effect comes a lot easier than thinking the despised enemy are doing something clever.
But would it be worth balancing the success of the infiltration mission on that, from the Imperial perspective? IMO, it'd be less suspicious if the Lancer suffered a visible equipment failure, rather than crew stupidity.
EDIT:
Actually, why are Lancer's crap? They're designed to be dedicated antifighter frigates, and their design makes a lot of sense, but any highly specialized design is going to create some interesting trade-offs. They'll be utter rubbish against peer vessels, and against heavy fighters like the B-wing and TIE bomber with longer range weapons, but their traditional targets are X-wings with weapons that are outranged by the Lancer's systems. While a better design might be to add turrets to particular sectors and have only the ones that are useful firing at any one time, the fundamental idea and it's implementation seems logical.
Now, I can see better implementations of the same concept. I think that a design based around traditional concussion missile VLS's would be more effective, especially if paired with advanced ECM systems. This notional system could potentially handle wave attacks as well as long-range fighter attacks better, but at substantially higher costs in munitions and (more importantly) expendable munitions.
macfanpro wrote:Actually, why are Lancer's crap? They're designed to be dedicated antifighter frigates, and their design makes a lot of sense, but any highly specialized design is going to create some interesting trade-offs. They'll be utter rubbish against peer vessels, and against heavy fighters like the B-wing and TIE bomber with longer range weapons, but their traditional targets are X-wings with weapons that are outranged by the Lancer's systems. While a better design might be to add turrets to particular sectors and have only the ones that are useful firing at any one time, the fundamental idea and it's implementation seems logical.
Now, I can see better implementations of the same concept. I think that a design based around traditional concussion missile VLS's would be more effective, especially if paired with advanced ECM systems. This notional system could potentially handle wave attacks as well as long-range fighter attacks better, but at substantially higher costs in munitions and (more importantly) expendable munitions.
My understanding is that Lancers are crap because they were ordered in a panic after the debacle at Yavin, and rushed into service before the engineers designing them could work all the kinks out of the class, resulting in a vessel with several serious flaws. In addition to this, Lancers, and frigates in general, often didn't get the best crews, those went to Star Destroyers and the like.
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Power to the Peaceful
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macfanpro wrote:Actually, why are Lancer's crap? They're designed to be dedicated antifighter frigates, and their design makes a lot of sense, but any highly specialized design is going to create some interesting trade-offs. They'll be utter rubbish against peer vessels, and against heavy fighters like the B-wing and TIE bomber with longer range weapons, but their traditional targets are X-wings with weapons that are outranged by the Lancer's systems. While a better design might be to add turrets to particular sectors and have only the ones that are useful firing at any one time, the fundamental idea and it's implementation seems logical.
Now, I can see better implementations of the same concept. I think that a design based around traditional concussion missile VLS's would be more effective, especially if paired with advanced ECM systems. This notional system could potentially handle wave attacks as well as long-range fighter attacks better, but at substantially higher costs in munitions and (more importantly) expendable munitions.
My understanding is that Lancers are crap because they were ordered in a panic after the debacle at Yavin, and rushed into service before the engineers designing them could work all the kinks out of the class, resulting in a vessel with several serious flaws. In addition to this, Lancers, and frigates in general, often didn't get the best crews, those went to Star Destroyers and the like.
What I'm saying is that from what's depicted, the Lancer isn't a bad design. It's great at preventing "trench runs," performed by small, maneuverable starfighters with close-range weapons. Where they fail is when the enemy uses larger fighters carrying longer range weapons, or when the ship is placed into a tactical environment that doesn't suit it, such as a peer engagement.
There was a trade-off to be made in its design: power for anti-ship weapons, or power for anti-fighter weapons. The Lancer was originally designed to work in concert with a heavy frigate or destroyer as anti-ship escort, and was intended to protect the larger ship from fighter attack. The use case imagined was the DS trench run, where many light fighters were attacking a large unmaneuverable target. The Lancer was intended to stay within the offensive umbrella of the capital ship while swatting the fighters that were attacking it. In this role, the Lancer seems to work pretty well (or there would be no reason for it not to, I've never read a depiction of one actually doing what it was intended to do), and it's when it's pushed out of this role it starts to fail.
Now, ECR raises a couple of points in the original 721. First, he mentions that the shields on the Lancer aren't good at surviving small numbers of large-scale hits, which does seem like a big omission, as it's targets generally carry proton torpedos which can provide enough punch to take its limited shields down. This is another example of the anti fighter or antiship trade-off being made, and the anti fighter role one. I think the reason for this shielding decision is based on its original deployment, next to HVTs with much more damage resistance than it. It would be reasonable that the fighters would expend their stores of heavy weapons on the HVT, then attack the Lancer with lasers. Because of this decision, it was decided to make the Lancer more resistant to laserfire than to proton torpedo fire.
I'd argue that the Lancer isn't a bad design-the tradeoffs seem to be reasonable-but the employment of the class has problems. To break the fourth wall, Lancers provide a mechanism for the underdog mentality to be justified. The majority of GCW-era material is set in the perspective of the Rebellion, and the Rebels employ a lot of fighters, so there is a lot of material set among fighters. For a starfighter squadron, a Lancer is (nominally) a hard target, and it provides a great "yay!" moment for the reader when it gets destroyed. Because of it's role, Lancers are (IMO unfairly) treated in the canon, since their role is so useful in the narrative of a story focused on starfighters.
Returning to the in-universe POV, another indicator of their success is the lack of replacement for the class. Starfighters are the hardest problem for Imperial forces, and the Lancer is one of the better solutions. The reason why is that organic starfighters have a lot of problems, including
Space - Starfighters take a lot of room to operate, and on small vessels that room is hard to come by
Logistics - Starfighters need a different set of parts and supplies to what their mothership needs, making the supply line just that little bit harder
Endurance - It's hard to preform long-range escort missions with starfighters always out, as the pilot (and his equipment) gets fatigued without the possibility of relief without substantial down-time
Response time - Because of their short endurance, starfighters can't respond very quickly to an attack, since they have to scramble first. A dedicated vessel can become combat-effect against a substantial threat faster than fighters can
Because of these factors, the Empire needs a antifighter vessel that's appropriate for discouraging hit-and-run attacks, as organically stored fighters aren't appropriate for the job. I think that the Lancer was too big for its role, but that's because it was only designed for protecting very large ships that would be attacked by substantial threats.
In short, I think that the SW canon has really undersold the Lancer-class, by quite a large margin. It's a perfectly good design, but since it acts as a great plot device, they get deployed stupidly into situations that they weren't designed for, and as a result get blown up. A better design might be missile-centric one I mentioned earlier, or the same idea but 40% smaller, but I'd have to have a lot more information about the uses of the class to say for certain.
I think you kind of missed my point. Lancers aren't crap because of any fundamental problems with the design or intended deployment, they're crap because of problems stemming form their development process being cut short. For example, they are IIRC, slow and underpowered, having trouble keeping up with the ships they're supposed to protect, let alone the fighters they're meant to destroy. Meanwhile, a Carrack "cruiser," in the same general size range, can keep up with X-wings. Also, IIRC, they only have four targeting computers, with each one controlling 1/4 of the ship's guns, so losing one handicaps the guns responsible for an entire sector of sky.
These aren't insurmountable problems, and they don't cripple the design, but a full development cycle probably would have identified and corrected them before mass production started.
A fuse is a physical embodyment of zen, in order for it to succeed, it must fail.
Power to the Peaceful
If you have friends like mine, raise your glasses. If you don't, raise your standards.
PhilosopherOfSorts wrote:I think you kind of missed my point. Lancers aren't crap because of any fundamental problems with the design or intended deployment, they're crap because of problems stemming form their development process being cut short. For example, they are IIRC, slow and underpowered, having trouble keeping up with the ships they're supposed to protect, ...
Do you have a source for that? I'd say that either a) the ships they were intended to protect aren't the ones that they are being compared to, or b) the figure is wrong. I'm leaning towards a, since the applications for Lancers would tend to have them be attached to Golans, Cruisers+, or cargo ships/tenders. None of these are notable for being fast.
Edit:
I realized on reflection that I'm moving the goalposts here down from escorting destroyers to escorting cruisers without substantial justification. My reasoning is that destroyers are just to cheap to justify a dedicated medium frigate to escort it, and it carries effective antifighter weaponry of its own. In contrast, cruisers and up are much more vulnerable to fighter attack as their bulk prevents as much centralized FCS and engagement, and the lack of armament of tenders is quite obvious.
let alone the fighters they're meant to destroy.
Note that it's not requisite to keep up with the fighters that are the intended target of the platform. The Lancer is an escort, not an interceptor, and it'd be totally useless to have it go haring off after a fighter at top speed (the only real purpose of keeping up with fighters) when it should be protecting the convoy. A better choice would be to have it fend off the attack by being hard to kill while dealing substantial damage, then supporting vessels would launch fighters to pursue.
Meanwhile, a Carrack "cruiser," in the same general size range, can keep up with X-wings.
This is because the Carrack is not an escort. It's a fast attack vessel, and in that purpose, it's huge expenditure of energy on speed makes sense. If you made the same tradeoff for Lancers, it would undoubtedly make them worse, thanks to reducing their weapon load even more to compensate for the bigger drives.
ECR talked about this earlier. The more engines you have, the less energy you have for weapons. The Lancer was billed as a antifighter ship, and it required all around coverage, and getting this required a certain (invariant) number of guns. Because of this, you eventually end up with a ship that's too big and too expensive, if you want that crazy speed requirement (this is exactly what went wrong with LCS, actually, just replace starfighters with speedboats).
The parallels with LCS are pretty clear. Faster ships have tighter mass limits, require more maintenance, and have less endurance, and this holds in SW. The Lancer is intended to protect convoys and capital ships, and the vessels it's escorting have long endurances and are slow. In turn, this means that the Lancer must have long endurances and be slow, since any other choice would cause odd logistical issues. To compound this, Lancers are essentially PD ships, and as such should stay close to the vessels they are protecting. Making a faster Lancer would give you a bigger ship (since you can't reduce the armament and keep the coverage) that would have less range (or take much more fuel), all for a feature that ideally would never be used, as it would divert the attention of the Lancer away from the HVTs.
In short, speed is a very bad idea in a escort vessel of any kind. It's fine in a ship designed for attack, like fighters or the big fighter that is the Carrack, but it is entirely counterproductive for escorts, since it creates logistical problems for either (if the captain is good and stays with his charges) no gain, or active detriment (if the captain leaves what he is escorting to pursue).
Because of these design choices, putting a Lancer (an escort ship) in an attack role is fundamentally doomed to failure, and the other way around is also true. An escort will always lose in combat numbers when compared to an attack vessel right off of the tender, but give both 2 weeks, and the escort will win. This endurance tradeoff is a important part of the design, and is also one of the hardest to sell.
Also, IIRC, they only have four targeting computers, with each one controlling 1/4 of the ship's guns, so losing one handicaps the guns responsible for an entire sector of sky.
If true, this would be the single most stupid and contradictory design in SW. Lancers most likely have FCS primarily contained in the turrets, with central fire coordination provided shipwide from multiple fully redundant computers. If true, it'd be the first thing to do on refit, as they'd be at the mercy of software problems even more than at the enemy's.
I doubt that even if they were originally made with 4 computers that they retained that setup for any period of time.
These aren't insurmountable problems, and they don't cripple the design, but a full development cycle probably would have identified and corrected them before mass production started.
The two concerns that would be crippling that you raised were the performance and the FCS. I think that "fixing" the performance would give you a worse ship, and the FCS issues are so totally idiotic I have no idea why they would be that way in even a prototype.
regarding the hardware improvements in 5th gen aircraft, isn't the F119/F135 engine producing about an extra 50% thrust both wet and dry than then previous generation of comparable sized engines?
If a black-hawk flies over a light show and is not harmed, does that make it immune to lasers?
Marko Dash wrote:regarding the hardware improvements in 5th gen aircraft, isn't the F119/F135 engine producing about an extra 50% thrust both wet and dry than then previous generation of comparable sized engines?
Yes, the F119 for instance develops 22% more thrust, according to P&W. Note that my argument was related specifically to computer hardware, rather than dynamic hardware.
I wanted to wait to get back to this until I had another chapter ready to go; here it is.
On board the Swiftsure, Olghaan was thinking hard, about politics- specifically the politics of his target and what they meant he would do next, how the beliefs of the man translated into character, which translated into action; and realising he did not know much of the story, and even less of the truth.
Once not very long ago, his opposite number had been a man of good standing but highly spotty reputation. He had done some service to the state, but his ship was renowned for pranks, scams and practical jokes played on other units of the fleet, many of which had no sense of humour at all. There had always been a wildness there.
This time last year, he had appeared to be a man who was clearly not enamoured of the Empire and a convinced partisan of the new order, but still- like many old Republicans- accepted it as the powers that be and the best of the pragmatically available alternatives. Then, what? He had done something highly political, and what, basically fumbled his entry into the great game, refused to become a player in his own right?
There were such things as power politics, and cliques and factions, but that was just the nature of the beast, the beasts being the human race. No sense objecting to that. There had to be a centre to it all, or it would get even worse, more futile, bloody and pointless.
The late republic had many members, but few supporters, and so much of what the Empire had to be was because the rotten old mechanisms had collapsed utterly under the strain. Many of the new legal and political mechanisms were ugly things in and of themselves, but indispensable to set the whole to rights.
Three hundred days ago, more recently even, Jorian Lennart would have subscribed to that philosophy too. So what drove him to take a stand like that, how has it changed him, and most especially how has it changed what can be expected of him tactically?
He hasn't joined the Alliance, or made moves and noises towards them. He's behaving like a man who has a case, he'll fight, and will he try to do it with words too? To the galaxy at large perhaps, but not to me. To the rest of the squadron also, but knows we are the people to whom the case cannot be put.
If we want the galaxy to keep turning on its axis, he has to be wrong. He's also not enough of an idiot to be easily convinced- he believes it for what he thinks to be sufficient reason. People who have lost the plot usually do.
There will be lies and deception, but gunfire will be the proof of it. There was a beep on the intercom. 'Boss, they're here.`
He had called a captains' conference at their own lying up point; some kind of mid course ambush was almost inevitable, made far too much sense for them not to try, so call the chosen to a rendesvous away from the likely scene of battle, sort out the plan and as much of the tactics as could reasonably be foreordained. Time to go and get it done.
His own command team were already there, less the navigator who was minding the ship, and the slowly extending sensor net; the enemy's would encounter theirs at some point, and then they would see how the running duel of in this case remote robotic scouting and antiscouting played out.
The people- it was a dangerous thing to do in the age of the political officer, to admit to caring and worrying about the state of mind of the crew, that it was even not as good as it could be.
It was also a dangerous thing to be indifferent to; even, no especially in this technological age, how well the crew understood and used their technology made or broke the fighting qualities of the ship, and enthusiasm and commitment were the roots of knowledge.
Swiftsure's crew were picked men, mostly, relatively indifferent to the politics but proud of their skill; none stupid enough not to be afraid although many refusing to admit it, most aware that against their rival in the elite they would be facing the professional challenge of their lives.
How many of the ships summoned could be expected to do the same? Who was of a quality that made them a capital piece rather than a pawn, who could be counted upon to take initiative rather than merely be directed? Entering the main ready room, first impressions given and taken.
Olghaan was of only a shade above average height, but broad in the beam, short hair prematurely turning grey; the dominant impression was of a solid man, willing to walk through the people in his way, weathered but not slowed down at all by it. Force of character, rather than charisma.
Was there anyone else among the seventy or so captains of ships who looked the part of a natural leader, a winner?
Looks being as frequently deceptive as they were, but- a couple, yes. Imperial naval uniform was simple, plain and offered limited room for flamboyance, but there was always the way a being carried themselves, and the first to catch his eye was a brashly confident young Commander who had the smell of a space pirate about him; commanding one of the taken up Demolisher frigates.
Falcata's commander was a disappointment, a thin, shivery man with skin not far from the colour of Olghaan's hair; he had suffered and seen others suffer from the hand of discipline, and far from inspiring him that safety lay upward, it had made him fearful and timid. Not what is needful in one of our strongest supports; promoting and demoting may be an essential, if that thing's heavy armament is to be made effective.
The commanding officer of torpedo sphere Edrossaia was something of a disappointment, too; moon faced, with deeply grooved lines of ill temper on the lunar maria- as far as Olghaan now understood it the thing had been put here of all places by the manufacturer, hoping for use and endorsement by Vader;
but hidden away in the reserve, and a reserve officer too slow and heavy to realise he was being used given charge, by the sector fleet possibly on prompting from business rivals, to keep it out of the limelight.
Tector class Ineffable's captain was similar shape to Olghaan, another mesomorph; almost oddly, artificially perfect in dress and deportment, held himself rigidly to the book of rules and standards as though rank were not a privilege, that he had to demonstrate perfection in order to command it. Would probably be wrong to send against a creative deviationist like Lennart alone, but looked dependable enough as an anvil to Swiftsure's hammer.
The Imperial- II Harridan's commanding officer actually looked comical at first, short, barely within weight regs, looking like a waddling grey duckling; until he made eye contact. What, the senior captain asked himself, does this man not hate?
Hollow wells with walls of anger, seeing through, dissecting in the mind's eye, most of human life dead to him, killing the only pleasure- as an assassin, as an executioner, I can use him. Not for any other purpose.
There was another standard Imperator- I, Forntarch Rampant, under the command of a tall thin man- split the difference between him and Harridan's CO and you might end up with two normal people, outside the braincase anyway.
Cool, cynical, excellent tactical reputation; something of a mystery why he had avoided assignment to the Death Squadron. A more credible hunter. Persuadable to Lennart's deviance? Unlikely.
The rest, the smaller ships- the navigator had been right. They were not of massive tactical value until the fight started to tilt one way or the other, which if six capital ships to one could not make happen was- the sort of extraordinary outcome that they, or Black Prince, could make happen.
'Gentlemen, you have been assembled here as a hunting squadron to deal with an Imperial renegade, quietly and discreetly under cover of the greater action. The target is HIMS Black Prince.' There was some reaction to that, less than could have been expected from people who had not been watching the news.
Location unknown, her fighter wing is operating over Veren Porphyr and that is where we have to begin. The first move will be to tempt her out of hiding by committing the torpedo sphere to the attack, drawing her fighters and dropships, then eliminating them and forcing the renegade itself to commit with a fighter and Interdictor attack on her deployed small craft.
We expect this to be a running fight, the enemy will attempt to manoeuvre clear and use the large gas giant's ring, moon and submoon system and the colonies scattered throughout them as cover. If allowed to escape, they would prove a potent asset to the rebellion, or various armed splinter groups hostile to the new order.
Make no mistake; the signature on the orders is not massively distinguished, but the authority behind them is that of the very highest level. The logic is clear- the Empire exists in order to get things done. Achieve the peace and stability that the old order totally failed in the end to do.
The commander and crew of that ship have consistently questioned the system, defied, flouted and sniped at authority, and finally degenerated to being worse than open rebels; defectors in place. They would- will- run if they have to.
You already have your squadrons, that you were selected from your home groups in; the basic operations plan is the setup as described transitioning to a concentric attack, which the target will attempt to disrupt and evade.
If attacked directly fall back on other units of the group, if another unit is attacked go to their aid; converge and destroy. The choice of battlefield is the enemy's, not ours. It does favour them, to a degree, but the appropriate response to that is overwhelming force.
There are no other friendlies involved; hostile surprises are possible, but would br directed against the death squadron primarily. There is a very high probability the target is expecting attack, and will attempt a counter- trap.
The first two units in will be the Edrossaia and interdictor, and I want the torpedo sphere to operate outside it's nominal purpose. Your torpedoes are heavily optimised for the disruptor role, I am neither expecting or intending antiship fire; structural strength and analytical scanning capability are what I need. An immovable watchtower.
The target will try to hide and evade, and has many tricks of electronic warfare to use, and we need to deprive him of as much of that as possible.
In theory they are still completing refit, with systems only partly integrated, and vulnerable; in practise I do not intend to place any faith in that at all, in fact I assume that he is feigning weakness to bring on the crisis that, having such views, he must expect. I repeat, overwhelming force. Once the target commits to rescuing his deployed small craft and troops, the group will jump in on navigation codes from Swiftsure, grouped by squadron, attack and destroy. Any questions?'
The one they all wanted to ask, and knew they would get no answer to, was 'why?' There were some looking thoroughly confused, some eager and hungry- and would bear watching- some obviously wondering how to get out of it; but they could all be kept in check.
There were some who had heard one or other of Lennart's press conferences and knew this was the inevitable political consequence, there were a couple looking at Olghaan with stunned, pittin in headlights eyes that did not belong on a military officer of any rank or branch (except maybe second lieutenant) trapped between two forces and asking, why me?
The commanders of capital ships, at least, were taking it professionally, they knew the weight and power their ships could bring to bear. Responsibility squashed out complacency there.
The largest single block of them, confident- possibly too much so, whether genuine or projected; perhaps it would actually be good for them, certainly better than the opposite approach. How much they had a right to, though...
Falcata had been a good fighting ship, once; Forntarch had a credible tally of pirates, blockade runners and local troublemakers, but at least they understood that they were heading for a professional challenge that would test their abilities to the limit.
If the rest were able to take the same approach- but why wish for the stars? They were all in charge of platforms with guns and fighters on, they were supposed to know what they were doing. There did seem to be no questions, or at least none which he was minded to let them ask.
'Return to your commands, brief your crews, and be ready to receive nav data in forty minutes. Order, Stability, Conformity- dismiss.'
It turned out there was a question, from Swiftsure's own nav, quietly muttered once they had left. 'Are you sure we need that much help, or that some of them have that much to offer?'
Not the best thing to say after a pep talk based on the Imperial virtues, but Olghaan gave him the answer anyway. 'The metastudies say we're predictable, always have been. We tend to take the optimum aggressive option quickly, and there are much worse things to do than the right thing, most of the time.
Jorian Lennart knows we're coming, as soon as he saw the names on the squadron list- what idiot let that out?- he must have known. By staying in place over Veren Porphyr, he's accepting the challenge. He's guessing what we're going to do and figuring moves, figuring out edges, devising losing plays for us and how to make them look like good ideas at the time.
We might win a single ship duel, might not. The optimum move in this case is not to go alone- we need them because they're not us, don't fly and fight as we do, they can trip the ambushes and run out his bag of tricks; doesn't really matter if they don't get a single turbolaser bolt on target, they blow pieces out of his plan simply by being there.'
A moment while the navigator digested that, then he said 'Forty minutes. right.'
On Black Prince, still for the moment his imperial majesty's ship, they were inded expecting it. The latest from Ravenous had been an urgent movement order; and it had been a useful but irrelevant moment of schadenfreude to note that the captain had been right. Offensive move to Anoat, specific target Hoth.
The main event was on, which meant that the time for their private war to be fought out in the shadows was now.
First thing to do was reposition the collection of probes and drones. Swiftsure and her support group wouldn't emerge piecemeal; the lack of twitches and sightings so far meant they weren't staging in, they would collect in a body first, then move- from where in the sky?
Start drawing overlapping circles based on the hyperdrive speeds of them all- that torpedo sphere acted as an anchor, no zip at all- find the common point, shuffle it a little out of harm's way, and there, as a working guess.
A large force closer to average quality couldn't pull the tricks a lone crack unit could; Swiftsure could do all sorts of things when it came to deceptive, evasive approach paths, but the body of them would probably bore straight in. Fifty- fifty then, half the drones in a broad near sky group, half along the likely line of approach.
Battle stations. The jury riging and patchworking Olghaan had predicted and been right to guess at, do it. Half finished, unfinished, in some cases the old code elements shoved back in again, a shanty town of code; but it promised nominal capability at least.
For a moment Lennart thought of saying nothing, between rumour, speculation and the occasional actual fact the crew probably knew the score anyway, but that wouldn't be enough.
'All hands, this is the captain. We are collectively about to receive the pay off for telling the Emperor he has no clothes, for playing court jester to people without a sense of humour, for trying to point out that in the last analysis it is the consequences that compel us to keep the promises we make.
I expect we will be attacked within the next hundred minutes by an Imperial Starfleet battle group under the impression, and the orders, that we have gone rogue and must be eliminated. We have no sensible alternative but to fight back. The aftermath and fallout may be terrible, but they'll be much worse if we're dead.
I think we were right to say what we did, to do what we did; we went further than was safe, but no further than was true. I would have made my peace with the darkness some time ago if it wasn't for you pushing me along with the tide of feeling that this was not right, that cynicism and survival eventually shade into surrender and complicity.
So we kept pushing, and every move we made to defend ourselves and clear our name only hurdled one problem to land us deeper in the next, every small and medium enemy aroused a larger. Now we face one of the crack ships of the Starfleet, one of our very few rivals in the elite of the elite.
Not the fight I'd have chosen, but nobody said doing the honourable thing was supposed to be easy. Flange and patchwork what isn't ready, stand to, and may the better madmen win.'
Turned to Brenn and added 'I think we have a good idea where they're coming in; get the first ambush ready.'
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Right; there are an awful lot of contemporary analogies being drawn that I'm not a hundred percent convinced are valid, or entirely appropriate, and I don't want to dissect them and produce another huge sprawl of filleted text. Cutting to the chase-
the class system as described in the Guide to Warfare, the in universe Anaxes War College system, rates corvette, frigate, cruiser, destroyer, battlecruiser, star dreadnought;
the system I'm using, and have been since I started this (before the Anaxes system was written up) runs-
light corvette, some LTL and resistance to same; medium corvette, many LTL or shielding fit to the task, or nominal entry level MTL capability, either weapons or shielding; heavy corvette, several MTL or shielding simular, at least both in the general zone;
light frigate, significant- more than a handful- MTL, substantial resistance; medium frigate, massed MTL and resistance to same; heavy frigate, nominal- handful- HTL capacity and shielding;
light destroyer, numerous- multiple- heavy turbolasers and signigifant depth of shielding and survivability; line destroyer, more or less Imperator/Imperial class or equivalent; heavy destroyer, anything significantly more powerful than that up to the start of cruiser;
above that, starting from the cubic kilometre or 3km length light cruiser, the numbers get big.
The Lancer is, I reckon, a medium corvette for it's bulk and ability to take fire, certainly not to give it; it is seriously outclassed as a war vessel by almost anything. I don't think the design was rushed, or half- baked, or suffered severe teething troubles, as much as it was fundamentally misconcieved.
It's essentially a mobile point defence battery, not area defence at all- it has nothing that can outrange the fighters, by the reference books it was originally described in. The bit about having sectoral fire control comes from one of the rogue squadron books, I believe, but the original write- up has them with actually bleeding edge on mount fire control, an attempt at advancement that proved unreliable- potentially brilliant when fully operational, but not often fully operational.
There is a minority design from the outer rim that can keep pace with TIE/Ln, and has long range area defence turrets, but it's grossly oversized and undergunned; a better alternative would be the already existing, fast, agile and numerous customs light corvette- Fractalsponge recently relit the picture of it- which has the gun reach and firepower to be an effective anti fighter platform, with a much smaller crew and operational budget, at the tactical price of being easier to kill than the Lancer.
The sidetrack about LCS- I read Salamander's blog, and the vitriol heaped on the thing over there is incredible. Particularly, people keep pointing to the Absalon class as an example of how it should have been done. I'm just a spectator to all of that, the people whose careers and lives might be riding on it have much more to say, and opinion does seem to trend against.
There is a successful Imperial modular design- the strike cruiser. So far the only routinely used modules are variants of payload bay, fighters troops or cargo, but there's no reason for the options to stay that way.
In terms of ECM and ECCM, I suspect it varies from ship to ship and design to design, but most of all from crew to crew. Perhaps it's a design quirk, but the performance of the crew, even if simply in keeping their systems well maintained and in good order never mind hands on battle management, seems to be at least a multiplier to the hardware if not a dominant factor.
In terms of robotic econiomics, I think what we're seeing is the effect of twenty- five thousand years of stock markets and legislation; what an item costs is very largely tied to public perception, not actual difficulty of manufacture, and 'what the market will bear' is driven by irrational factors. Useful droids are absurdly cheap because they have been artificially made so, war droids have their prices artificially inflated. That is only starting to change under the Empire.
Phew. More later.
The only purpose in my still being here is the stories and the people who come to read them. About all else, I no longer care.
Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:
The Lancer is, I reckon, a medium corvette for it's bulk and ability to take fire, certainly not to give it; it is seriously outclassed as a war vessel by almost anything. I don't think the design was rushed, or half- baked, or suffered severe teething troubles, as much as it was fundamentally misconcieved.
I'm not sure - I think it's a reasonable design for convoy defense, but not for anything else, and certifiably not what it's been used for in the canon.
It's essentially a mobile point defence battery, not area defence at all- it has nothing that can outrange the fighters, by the reference books it was originally described in. The bit about having sectoral fire control comes from one of the rogue squadron books, I believe, but the original write- up has them with actually bleeding edge on mount fire control, an attempt at advancement that proved unreliable- potentially brilliant when fully operational, but not often fully operational.
Starting from the top, I think that this points to its intended used as a convoy escort. For economic reasons, commercial vessels don't carry PD, and thanks to the Rebel's use of asymmetric warfare there was a need to provide a long-endurance vessel able to handle fighters and their weapon payloads effectively. I think that this was the role the Lancer was designed for, staying close to large vessels armed with little weaponry, acting as a last line of defense while fighters preformed the offensive part of the defensive role.
With mount fire control and with the advances in SW computer hardware over ours, I don't see why they didn't just but a dozen FCS systems in each turret and fall back on them in turn.
There is a minority design from the outer rim that can keep pace with TIE/Ln, and has long range area defence turrets, but it's grossly oversized and undergunned; a better alternative would be the already existing, fast, agile and numerous customs light corvette- Fractalsponge recently relit the picture of it- which has the gun reach and firepower to be an effective anti fighter platform, with a much smaller crew and operational budget, at the tactical price of being easier to kill than the Lancer.
Customs corvettes have the potential disadvantage over the Lancer of endurance, as well as the more clear-cut one of soaking up damage.
The first disadvantage is endurance. Consider interstellar shipping in Star Wars: really huge ships with relatively slow hyperdrives. These ships by their nature will be able to get to anywhere, but really, really slowly. I think that the corvette could require resupply on longer escort trips long before its charges did, and it's unlikely that the escorted vessels would carry all the things needed to resupply the corvettes.
The Lancer is intended (by my interpretation) to sit close to its escorts, providing protection against fighters. This protection comes in two parts: 1) blowing them up, and 2) taking the damage. Customs corvettes can preform the first job, but not the second. This makes them great at being customs ships, preforming medium-endurance missions which can involve some blowing stuff up. However, it also makes them lousy defenders, since they're only offensive, especially if you're trying to minimize the potential for damage (insurers, etc.)
Customs corvettes are probably the right tool(tm) for offensives against fighters or defending vessels that can take damage from fighters. They're maneuverable enough to keep up with anything they're in formation with, and they carry a great antifighter punch. I'd say that customs corvettes would do better than a Lancer in every situation that the Lancer has been depicted in, and I think that this is why the Lancer seems silly. However, in exchange for their speed, they have less endurance, and this makes them worse as escorts for freighters.
The sidetrack about LCS- I read Salamander's blog, and the vitriol heaped on the thing over there is incredible. Particularly, people keep pointing to the Absalon class as an example of how it should have been done. I'm just a spectator to all of that, the people whose careers and lives might be riding on it have much more to say, and opinion does seem to trend against.
Well, the trade-off that I'm referencing is pretty well acknowledged, even among the defenders of the class, as it was one of the design's features to enable it to pursue speedboats and the like.
Anyway, I mention it because I think that the Lancer is on the other end of the trade-off. It's likely to have pretty good endurance, but at the cost of being really quite slow. This works fine in a convoy situation, but miserably in a attack environment.
In terms of ECM and ECCM, I suspect it varies from ship to ship and design to design, but most of all from crew to crew. Perhaps it's a design quirk, but the performance of the crew, even if simply in keeping their systems well maintained and in good order never mind hands on battle management, seems to be at least a multiplier to the hardware if not a dominant factor.
A good illustration of this is the design decisions that the USSR designers made in developing their sensor loadouts. Smaller USSR designed vessels have lots and lots of the same sensor. This wasn't always because the device was needed to maintain observation of a particular angle, it was because they needed the redundancy to allow service to only take place in port. Russian crews are generally mostly conscripts, and aren't considered to be very good about maintaining their systems, so the engineers compensated by making the harder to maintain components heavily redundant.
As I mentioned earlier, it seems like the Lancer could benefit from this mentality, as SW electronics are way smaller than ours, allowing extreme levels of redundancy. You could have each turret have multiple redundant FCSs onboard, able to control both their own turret and any others who's FCSs failed.
In terms of robotic econiomics, I think what we're seeing is the effect of twenty- five thousand years of stock markets and legislation; what an item costs is very largely tied to public perception, not actual difficulty of manufacture, and 'what the market will bear' is driven by irrational factors. Useful droids are absurdly cheap because they have been artificially made so, war droids have their prices artificially inflated. That is only starting to change under the Empire.
I can't imagine the legal overhead in SW to start a company, even after (presumably) the Imperials simplified it. This might be part of the reason for the lack of innovation in the SW universe, actually. Anyway, I'd think that this would create huge impetuses for companies to undercut the primary providers of the product's prices, but I'm not sure about what happens in irrational markets.
Andras wrote:Is Lennart going to have support from his home Squadron (851)?
I think that would be pretty hard to justify from 851's perspective. Might be easier if they hid underneath Vader's umbrella; use the fact that Black Prince is attached to Death Squadron to put them beyond political question, but there's still the problem of getting Lennart and company off of whatever list naughty regional reserves end up on.
“Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:The Lancer is, I reckon, a medium corvette for it's bulk and ability to take fire, certainly not to give it; it is seriously outclassed as a war vessel by almost anything. I don't think the design was rushed, or half- baked, or suffered severe teething troubles, as much as it was fundamentally misconcieved.
I'm not sure - I think it's a reasonable design for convoy defense, but not for anything else, and certifiably not what it's been used for in the canon.
The problem there is ECR's criticism that the ship is unfit for area defense. A convoy escort either needs:
1) To be able to defend the entire volume the convoy occupies from one place (i.e. AEGIS cruisers in the air defense role; they serve to control the entire airspace around a task force). Or...
2) To be able to rush around and protect the convoy at any point where it is threatened (i.e. WWII destroyers rushing at 30 knots to protect an 8-knot convoy from submerged submarines that traveled at comparable speed).
The Lancer doesn't have either the gun range for (1) or the speed for (2). Oops.
Starting from the top, I think that this points to its intended used as a convoy escort. For economic reasons, commercial vessels don't carry PD, and thanks to the Rebel's use of asymmetric warfare there was a need to provide a long-endurance vessel able to handle fighters and their weapon payloads effectively. I think that this was the role the Lancer was designed for, staying close to large vessels armed with little weaponry, acting as a last line of defense while fighters preformed the offensive part of the defensive role.
But you can't park one Lancer next to each freighter, let alone the two or three it would take to provide 4*pi steradian coverage against attacks; that is not a realistic plan.
Customs corvettes have the potential disadvantage over the Lancer of endurance, as well as the more clear-cut one of soaking up damage.
The obvious solution is to build the corvettes to associate with a dedicated tender; I'd expect such a tender class to already exist. And it could be built as an essentially civilian hull, so it would be one heck of a lot cheaper than almost any kind of dedicated warship.
ECR, what are the odds that the Mon-Cal might try to break through the siege of Hoth's outer guard to escort the transports out, and stumble onto the imperials blowing each other up? Low to middling? I doubt the fight will be quiet or hard to notice, so it mostly depends on if the squid-fish have anything better to do.
And I agree with Simon-the Lancer is equipped with lots and lots of quad-lasers-which are about as effective at taking out fighters as the machine gun turrets on a B-17. Fine in theory, but the damn things don't have a lot of range so you can't exactly deal with anyone who isn't attacking you or your next-door neighbor. LTL would have longer range, as would standard long-barrel laser canons like an X-wings. Optimizing the turbo-lasers for flack-performance might be possible, but it would probably produce a pure anti-fighter specialist weapon. Concussion missiles are too expensive for the bean-counters, but they might be the best choice for actual area defense.
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)