cthia wrote:I certainly don't think there were many more than 10 employed at Beowulf. But, wouldn't that be the minimum number needed to cover their area of concern? Which means that they would have been emplaced near their maximum effective range.
When I say close, I mean relatively close considering their maximum range. "Practically" close for MAlign consumption. Pun intended. If they would have been deployed at their maximum effective range, that would have been a lot of real estate to cover, having only a general idea of their location. If they had only a "general" idea, then I have a problem.
Mycroft represents lots of trade secrets housed in a single platform that could fall into enemy hands. And the GA knows there is a silent drive system out there. They also know they did the same thing to the Peeps, and they should have known that a lot of what made that possible was that the Peep platforms were in close proximity to each other, and that their ships would be the beacon. So, armed with all of this knowledge and the need for security, only someone very high up in the food chain would know the location of those platforms. And every one of those people would be found in the MBS. Whoever the rat bastard mole was on Beowulf certainly didn't know the exact coordinates. And as textev testifies that the logic is sound, he only knew a general location. So, for those same security reasons, how general an area would be known? I think too much so to find stealthy platforms that would be distributed at their maximum effective range, in just two weeks.
What, the MA gave the SB's carte blanche to execute a standard search pattern behind enemy lines? Could they risk that? I can't see them totally relying on test signals.
The Mycrofts are fairly new platforms, and remember, Beowulf wasn't made privy to the location of the FTL buoys emplaced in their system when the SL attacked. And they represent much older technology.
But okay, so they had some kind of a vague search area. But space is big. Huge. And these are humongous platforms searching an enemy's back yard. They couldn't have had free rein to just wander about - just shy of aimlessly. I also would love to think they'd have to be seeded in a 2-1 fashion to ensure success. Tester knows the RMN heavily seeded the area with a net advantage in armed drones to do what they did to the Peeps. Obviously, a single platform surviving would have been fatal to the MA's plans.
You'd also have to ask why a platform wasn't placed deep in the inner system, which was one of my initial questions. But that decision was probably political in nature, because the GA had to appear to remain neutral by staying out of the inner system?
So, the Bullets had two weeks. But two weeks shouldn't have been enough to tie down the location of every single platform which was only pulsing for four short beats very infrequently. And I suppose this would suggest that grav pulses aren't as directional as... lasers - which requires anyone trying to intercept their signal to be served up a heaping helping of providence by being smack dab between two platforms when they pulse. Another thing is I can't accept a need for the platforms to constantly break radio silence for a systems check but once when they are first deployed. After that, only a self-diagnostic program should be run. These things are highly classified. You don't keep sending out a series of "find me" pulses like a galaxy's pulsars.
Also, supposedly the Bullets were programmed to fire weapons when Mycroft goes active. What exactly constitutes "going active?" Full communication between platforms shouldn't be allowed during battle stations. Battle stations isn't the time for a system's test. But I do recall the Peeps and the SL always caught FTL chatter in the system. Still, the Bullets couldn't fire prematurely.
At any rate, textev placed emphasis on their size. They could all fit in one freighter, yes, but it is difficult to think the MA would risk more than one even if textev wouldn't have made that clear. However, that means that only one freighter would be responsible for kicking out at least a 2-1 number of these monstrous platforms all at once. Escape pods can be seen fleeing a warship like flies when abandoning ship, and they are much smaller. You may argue that that is during battle stations when you got an ever watchful eye on the enemy. True. But then, Beowulf should have been at high alert during that time. At least DEFCON 2. Which means even an air lorry full of kids would have been watched like a hawk.
Plus, why in the hell would the R-frickin-MN be caught with their pants down the same way they caught the Peeps, when they knew a great big ugly scorned belligerent stepped on angry prodded gorilla of a husband was present and loaded for bear. When a gorilla is loaded for bear, he's insane. There's gonna be trouble.
Not a single GA ship was towing a Mycroft platform for redundancy.
Disclaimer: I really need to reread UH. I wasn't aware that the freighter which dropped off the Bullets had done so with a two-week lead time. But even something is fishy about that. Freighters aren't allowed to sit around that long without being unloaded. And I can't imagine the equivalence of drug sniffing, bomb sniffing dogs aren't a norm in the HV. Especially during DEFCON 2. Bombs were able to sit that long without detection? In the HV? During DEFCON 2?
I don't think a single platform surviving would have been any more fatal to the MAlign's plans than what actually happened. As far as we know Mycroft should have a range restriction not unlike Keyhole II - so able to make an FTL fire control link to ACMs within about 5 light minutes (90 million km) of it.
If a single surviving platform was close enough to the SLN BCs for them to be in range then it would be out of FTL range of Beowulf's Skywatch as so unable to receive and relay the fire control settings to it's missiles. And if a single surviving platform was close enough to Skywatch to get the FTL fire control data upload then it'd be too far from the SLN BCs (which remember, barely cross the hyper limit) to have FTL fire control of the Apollo missiles. So they'd have still been in autonomous mode when they reached the BCs -- just like they were without the platforms at all.
As for platform separation you seem to be arguing for somewhat contradictory things
-- saying they're too close together, while also saying they were emplaced near their maximum effective range, but wanting redundant coverage (2-1)...
But they can't be placed with redundant coverage without being closer to each other so their coverage overlaps.
My estimated 10 platforms minimum to cover the inner system has those platforms at about their maximum effective range -- as far away as they can be without creating significant no coverage areas (aka dead zones) -- which, based on Keyhole II, I'm putting at about 7 LM (126 million km) apart; with each platform able to FTL control missiles out to about 5 LM (90 million km). With that minimum emplacement their locations are roughly equally spaced throughout the area inside the hyper limit -- because otherwise, again, you'd have dead zones -- which does means that once you find a few of them their spacing pattern would likely become pretty obvious.
With the minimum number of platforms, meaning they're nearly as far apart as they can be to maintain coverage, they can't be randomly placed without creating coverage dead zones. But if you accept having more platforms, closer together, then you
can have enough redundancy to somewhat randomize individual platform placement without creating dead zones -- but you didn't want platforms closer together...
As for "going active", my impression was that was when the FTL traffic to the Mycroft platform greatly increased. As it would
have to do in order to do to start sending targeting data to it's missiles. It's whole purpose is to receive and relay FTL fire control information and the relaying part of that inescapable requires it to start sending high bandwidth FTL signals to all the missiles it's about to order to launch. Unfortunately that communication is an inescapable part of their combat role.
And for the freighter dropped them off, it appears I had drastically underestimated how long the Silver Bullets would have been in system. I still don't see a firm date, but while searching just now to remind myself of her name (
Star Galleon’s ) I found this disucssion I'd forgotten about.
Uncompromising Honor: pg.271/512 RTF edition wrote:Benjamin nodded. “Have your projections for in-system deployment changed?”
“Not significantly.” Daniel shook his head. “Given the volume we’ve projected for the Mycroft platforms’ locations, they should be fully deployed within twelve days.”
“Dwell time projections?”
“That’s actually a little better than our original estimates. Given the size of the final platform, we were able to build in deployable solar panels and a trickle charger for the plasma capacitors. They’ll be far enough out to limit what the panels can scoop up, but they should have enough power to hold the accumulators’ charge for at least eighty days before they fall behind the leakage rate and the capacitors drop below minimum operating levels. The numbers for Beowulf suggest it’ll be closer to ninety or even a hundred days, but eighty’s a safe minimum estimate.”
So 12 days from getting dropped off just to disperse across the system; and a total of about 3 months maximum from drop off until the attack has to happen.
However if
Star Galleon made her schedule she'd have arrived at Beowulf around the start of December and we know the attack happened in the section of the final section of the book; marked "JANUARY 1923 POST DIASPORA". So it appeared they had between 4 - 8 weeks to disperse and sniff out the Mycroft platform locations.
As for the freighter hanging around; why would it need to?
Hyper in (where you're much further from any sensor than a ship would be during combat) and dump your Silver Bullets as you trundle in system to make your perfectly legitimate shipping stop, then leave as normal. The freighter isn't controlling the drones, their fully pre-programmed, so there's no need for it to hang around. And so you'd be dropping them when you're too far away to be under close visual or active radar observation; the kinds you'd need to detect dropping off containers while hundreds of millions of km from the planet.
