Questionable Questing

That said... I've also had a bit of a stray 'write playground' to doodle omake grade urges, if I want to give a lazy original 'take' on such settings. And if I'm sad enough to do a light reading on Xianxia... Who knows?

Well actually I was referring to the comments you had in my profile last week.

Thanks for taking the time to look up the statements on system rarity for me. So we're basically guaranteed an Imris-tier "industrial sweet spot", great.

Christ I feel like I did a bunch of math for no reason

Honestly I thought your destroyer design iffy because of it needing lateral thrust most and thus the drive shaft would be dependent on width instead of length.

I'm still going to try to push for the ME frigates being available though because there's too clear an advantage based on the numbers we have.

Assuming cylindrical profile, destroyers have are 189.7m wide. Depending on RKKV support machinery thickness, you could interlace 150m lateral thrusters, which would still give a significant boost to dodging dV over torches.

Yes, but your gain in delta-V is greatly reduced at that point. You also have to use multiple thrusters to prevent rolling because they can't pass through the centerline, whereas the fusion torch could still be mounted on the center line. So you'll probably end up spending more mass on the engines.

Riders and other small parasites get +100% dV. Even a +50% dodging dV is huuuuge, and not to mention the massive boost in strategic mobility with the 12/21g or 35g (if aux radiator) main tubes. Oh and the heat-sinking ability of a DD is proportionally higher too...

Between the additional mass of the engines eating into your delta V budget, and the lower delta V benefit to begin with. I can easily see it just not being worth the added complexity.

Well riders only get +82% dV, but yes I do expect you end up with significantly higher dodging dV in the end, but you also have to consider fueling logistical burdens from the less common fuel needed in vast quantities. I suspect this is the main concern with frigates as well.

Now to be clear, I agree with your assessment, and I'd run ME drive destroyers as well accepting the lower tactic acceleration for even a +50% gain in dodge dv and a likely absurd gain in strategic dv. But I can see where logistical concerns might predominate for a real navy.

The change in propulsion efficiency might make drone spam less viable; they're too small to fit a decent ME propulsion unit; and if your attack drones can't cross a volume longer than defenders can retreat across it...

Well drones are part of the logistic issue with switching a ship over. Since they have to carry hydrogen fuel for the drones still anyway so it means two sets of tanks.

I don't think that the enemy is likely to retreat in that fashion though. Keep in mind that drones probably never had the delta-V of a full up ship.

Retreating away from a drone strike is basically ceding the field, and you're burning a lot of delta-V on your capital ships while the enemy capital ships aren't.

Opening the gap to minimize closing velocity (rather than dodging entirely) would make the drone attacks vastly weaker. And if you're sacrificing 10% of your dV rather than 30-40% (depending on how much was reserved for strategic movement) to neutralize a big drone wave, one must consider if that mass and volume of the drone wave (and support machinery, etc) would be better off in being in bigger parasites.

Bigger parasites are more vulnerable to the enemy capital ships though. Opening the gap also means leaving your dust barriers behind.

Turning tail and running away also means ceasing to fire.

The drones could also just hop up layers in hyperspace to catch up.

You yourself calculated barrier riders could recreate barriers 800x...

As for ceasing to fire, it's fair for continuous weapons, but RKKV ships could just fly away in between cooldowns.

I mean, most combat should really be happening in the higher layers; the mobility disadvantage of being in realspace is horrendous.

Yes they can recreate their barriers functionally indefinitely, but that takes a lot of time between starting to make a barrier and when it's actually remade.

RKKV ships can't just fly away between cooldowns because they have to retract their fins to fly away. So their cooldown won't progress much while moving.

Combat in bigger colonies can be kept to gamma layer, but in our size most of the fighting will happen in real space because that's where our stuff and most of our forts will be.

We could fight at higher layers, but that would leave us vulnerable to defeat in detail.

Similar issues apply to others at our size.