new/old dead horse, futher beating requested

Yup. You have two practical options: find somewhere else to raid or choose to become decisively engaged. The situation is roughly akin to 8 guys with swords 100 yards down the hall from a guy with a 4 round pump action shotgun. It's pretty likely that they can kill him if they charge, but it is pretty much assured that there will not be 8 swordsmen alive at the end of this fight. So you go first.

kzt wrote:Yup. You have two practical options: find somewhere else to raid or choose to become decisively engaged. The situation is roughly akin to 8 guys with swords 100 yards down the hall from a guy with a 4 round pump action shotgun. It's pretty likely that they can kill him if they charge, but it is pretty much assured that there will not be 8 swordsmen alive at the end of this fight. So you go first.

So you park your SD in orbit around your planet. How is that going to stop a pirate from intercepting ships on the hyper limit?

Star systems are big places. A single ship, no matter how powerful, cannot police it effectively.

Also, there's a few nasty tricks you can play to take that one SD out of action. "Stand down", the pirates may say, "or we start firing our missiles from a couple of million klicks out, and while our targeting isn't going to be good at that range, planets are kinda hard to miss."

The E wrote:So you park your SD in orbit around your planet. How is that going to stop a pirate from intercepting ships on the hyper limit?

Oh, not a bit. But that is, as I said earlier, roughly akin to graffiti being painted on buildings at night. Disturbing and clearly undesirable, but not an emergency to the planet.

Also, there's a few nasty tricks you can play to take that one SD out of action. "Stand down", the pirates may say, "or we start firing our missiles from a couple of million klicks out, and while our targeting isn't going to be good at that range, planets are kinda hard to miss."

Sure, and an 80k pirate is going to saturate the missile defense of an SD exactly how? They don't perform well against salvos of hundreds of missiles at 0.8C with RMN penaids, but against 6 or 8 missile salvos of SDMs? Please.

kzt wrote:Sure, and an 80k pirate is going to saturate the missile defense of an SD exactly how? They don't perform well against salvos of hundreds of missiles at 0.8C with RMN penaids, but against 6 or 8 missile salvos of SDMs? Please.

By firing on the parts of the planet the SD is currently not orbiting over.

By anchoring the SD to a planet, you create a gigantic blind spot in its defensive coverage, one that a more maneuverable opponent can exploit.

Also, what is going to stop a would-be warlord in possession of a division or two of battlecruisers from doing the same thing?

Point being, a single SD is useless. It can't fight pirates effectively and it can't stop a sufficiently determined attacker effectively. The money that would have to be spent to keep it in working order is better spent on a couple of LAC squadrons and a few system defense pods.

Oh, not a bit. But that is, as I said earlier, roughly akin to graffiti being painted on buildings at night. Disturbing and clearly undesirable, but not an emergency to the planet.

It is, however, how the majority of pirate ops are conducted. Sooner or later, the people on the planet will ask why their government is spending tons of money to keep that single SD operational, when it can't even do something as simple as protect the commerce of the planet.

Using understaffed SD's as scarecrows against pirates is like trying to kill mosquitoes with a sledgehammer while your hands are tied to your feet, at least it'll provide some comic relief for anyone watching the spectacle.

There are far more efficient means to scare pirates away if that's your goal, just gift the system some LAC's which actually can patrol a system effectively.

The E wrote:By firing on the parts of the planet the SD is currently not orbiting over.

By anchoring the SD to a planet, you create a gigantic blind spot in its defensive coverage, one that a more maneuverable opponent can exploit.

What? The ships are parked in orbit until you need them to move. Your effective missile defense range is certainly more than the diameter of the planet. In addition, there is only a small constantly moving cone that a ship in high orbit cannot directly visually observe. And my actual suggestion was three SDs, of which two can probably be kept running at any given moment.

So now we are at two BC, up from one pirate... Draw out the geometry. There isn't a way to get two hostile ships positioned such that you can't maneuver to engage them.

The reason why people don't directly threaten planetary strikes is that it attracts attention from people with actual navies who dislike this kind of thing and have the ability to make examples of planets who annoy them.

However if a couple of squadrons of battle fleet shows up you are in a lot of trouble.

It is, however, how the majority of pirate ops are conducted. Sooner or later, the people on the planet will ask why their government is spending tons of money to keep that single SD operational, when it can't even do something as simple as protect the commerce of the planet.

Not really. First, it is trivially demonstrable that you need many more ships to actually protect anything outside planetary near space, and to protect things that go outside the hyperlimit requires a LOT of ships, some of which need to be hyper-capable. People can tolerate bad things happening to other people's merchants for a long time. It's all very sad, but it nobody they know. And given that merchants are infrequent out here, how many pirates are going to be here?, and how many will be located with the right geometry to engage? So losing a merchant is going to be infrequent anyhow.

kzt wrote:Not really. First, it is trivially demonstrable that you need many more ships to actually protect anything outside planetary near space, and to protect things that go outside the hyperlimit requires a LOT of ships, some of which need to be hyper-capable. People can tolerate bad things happening to other people's merchants for a long time. It's all very sad, but it nobody they know. And given that merchants are infrequent out here, how many pirates are going to be here?, and how many will be located with the right geometry to engage? So losing a merchant is going to be infrequent anyhow.

But evil warlords with a bit of an expeditionary fleet are a daily occurence?

I would think that if you want to enjoy the benefits of intersteller commerce, the ability to keep your system clean of pirates would be a pretty strong priority. Too many lost cargos and the merchis stop coming. Bad for the reputation.

Don

kzt wrote:Not really. First, it is trivially demonstrable that you need many more ships to actually protect anything outside planetary near space, and to protect things that go outside the hyperlimit requires a LOT of ships, some of which need to be hyper-capable. People can tolerate bad things happening to other people's merchants for a long time. It's all very sad, but it nobody they know. And given that merchants are infrequent out here, how many pirates are going to be here?, and how many will be located with the right geometry to engage? So losing a merchant is going to be infrequent anyhow.

This is the issue, any planet with the resources to believe they can maintain an SD (Rose colored glasses) will have valuable items outside homeworld orbit. Trying to use an SD as many are proposing is likely to significantly impact the availability of the rest of the navy. Periodic visits to mining processors in the Asteroid belts (processing low grade ore into high grade ore (or even ingots), providing consumables to miners), would be a task that prevents pirates from getting frisky.

Well sure. But it is a totally different problem. It's the difference between detecting and stopping every drug smuggler in a cigarette boat, light plane or sub vs a military invasion. One is a lot more common than the other, but the other is a much more serious threat if it happens.