Loroi laser tech has effective range out to 120000 against enemy missiles, hitting a missile thats flying directly away from them would be far easier.
However macron cannons would be far better option then lasers. They are the only real world "beam" weapon that can deliver more energy to target then used to fire reducing the antimatter needed, lasers providing thrust are still using significant amounts of antimatter from the ship and while it increases missile/torpedo efficiency it doesn't counter the problem the Loroi have with the antimatter cost of torpedos by too much.
As for acceleration
50 seconds(distance to travel ~120000km from the firing ship, which is the max range Loroi point defences can hit a missile, I am assuming targeting efficiency based on this) gives 490km/s... thats around 2/5ths the speed the largest Loroi torpedo can reach and 4X the speed their small torpedoes can reach before exhausting all its fuel.
If the Loroi wanted to create a ship design that had mass Macron or laser pusher guns they could drop the antimatter required for fuel to 10% in the missiles and have a missile barge that can release a thousand torpedoes for the cost of 100 normal USR "Tolot" Torpedo while out performing it by 4X velocity and 16X the acceleration before kicking over to the second stage(original engine) and having the same performance from then on.
The downside is the missiles/torpedoes have to fly in a straight line while being accelerated and are far easier to target before they kick over to the original engine, lack of Umiak PD however would make it much less of a problem and matter of fact forcing the Umiak to use a main gun to target a missile would be a win anyways and your adding thousand missiles for them to target for the antimatter cost of a hundred.
Sometimes its not about having an effective weapon that your enemy cant counter, its about having a weapon system that requires your enemy to waste resources to counter.
Umiak would have to start producing PD on their ships reducing the number of main guns they can carry, or putting production and space into anti torpedo missiles meaning they bring less anti ship torpedoes to every fight. Either is a win for the Loroi even if they only produce a few missile barges, because the damage they could do to the Umiak if they didn't putresources into a counter is far worse then the damage done to their combat efficiency if they do.
Bamax wrote: ↑Thu Jun 17, 2021 11:59 amKrulle wrote: ↑Thu Jun 17, 2021 8:27 amI just wonder though, if that missile will make a lot of damage. The pusher plates need to be pretty massive (a lot less than a pusher plate for a ship which is intended to survive combat), and thus you're creating a kinetic missile more than an explosive missile.
What if that missile then misses?
It will be a lot less efficient at altering/adjusting its course than a conventional missile.
If pulses are left when hitting the enemy, these pulses can do some damage too if used as normal explosives.
But as mentioned before, those missiles will be VERY expensive, and difficult to handle.
For the same amount of space on a ship, and cost of manufacturing, it seems you'll get a lot more out of conventional missiles.
Which you can use to try to box in an enemy...
But yeah, war/is was seldom a time for cost-benefit analysis, but often for maximum impact weapons.
And in that regard, an Orion-type missile may sound great.
A,manned Orion is big because it has to be. AM, or it's equibalent, allows one to make a smaller version simply due to energy density.
A few grams of antimatter equal big boom.But we could easily.do more than that.
And massive won't need to be. A thin film of oil on solid metal balls that were basketball size at ground zero for a nuke detonation survived totally intact.
The oil layer vaporized, but the shock of the plasma was so hard the balls were found miles away.
Huge no, just large. enough for 60 b-balls. a plate, and whatever else.
Smaller than a blister or shuttle or fighter.
Expensive? Metal and bombs they know how to make.
It's arguably cheaper than making complex 30gr ocket torpedoes!
LATE EDIT: There is one major drawback....time. The moment the Umiak see the Loroi do this they would begin copying them, since they have much the same technology if the Loroi could not end the war before the Umiak managed to fully adopt Orion missile tech, the war is lost to the Loroi.
Since Umiak would use regular missile screens, and then spam 1000g orion missiles at closer ranges. Even the Loroi could not persevere against that indefinirely.
Also due to the sheer power of Type A orion propulsion, you must deploy it from the ship, then fly off a safe distance before it ignites the first bomb. Since at close range a Type A Orion missile would damage the ship that launched it from the blast of Type A in the first pulse bomb.
You really don't want Type A Orion missiles flying close to each other as they launch unless you can ensure none are behind each other, since they would incinerate them or blow them backward.