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Attacking Darius:

Join us in talking discussing all things Honor, including (but not limited to) tactics, favorite characters, and book discussions.
Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:01 pm

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Brigade XO wrote:
ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Good question. It depends on what the expected drift is. And this also answers your other questions.

Thrusters don't necessarily have to be visible. Puffs of cold gas can maintain relative position to one another without giving the minefield away from a distance. Those would produce very minimal acceleration and thus couldn't combat a large drift. This and their limited fuel supply will limit how long the minefield is effective for.

And then there are orbital mechanics. .


The drift and probable dispersion rate (and directions) of mines once laid in space is another question that needs more work. At minimum, somebody is going to have to handle doing repair/maintain work on mines laid for things like defending the Junction, termini- which are long term installations and the types of fields laid to defend (or attack something) short term such as what Mike ran into.

So you need minesweepers. Sure, you could probably use purpose built minelayers and just -slowly- reverse the process to recover the mines. Minesweepers appear usually to be engaged in finding mines and then destroying them......disarming could be "interesting".
If they are your own (or an allied Star Nation's) you should be able to pick them up and move them after shutting them off. Even if inexpensive, there is still a good amount of credits involved.

Finding them could be interesting since they should be as stealthy as possible to avoid an unfriendly ship spotting them.
Your own forces should have charts of where (and when) and what they laid and what the anticipated movement of the field was projected to be. Then there is the question of how close you need to be to transmit (probably wisker com) shutdown codes to deal only with the one you want instead of shutting off the whole field if dealing with someplace like the Junction. How long is their communications power normaly good for, what happens when the power gets too low- does it disarm the mine?

And, are they capable of both proximity and command detonation? That would also drive how you might want to be able to turn them on and off. We saw that mines at Cerebus were proximity with nuclear explosions but these days it seems like they are more likely to be pods which double as remote missile launchers using laser heads. :)
You can always deal with enemy mines by using CMs or perhaps lasers to destroy them.

You anticipated some of my musings. Maintenance surely must add to the overall cost of this weapon. In fact, that is one area in which historical mines differ. Oh, Wikipedia says that removing mines can take up to 200 times longer than it took to lay them. But that shouldn't be true in the HV. The advantage that our older mines had on HV mines is their durability. There are mines still in existence today from WWII that continue to be dangerous, sitting in various minefields because it is too costly to remove them. I used to think of mines as set and forget emplacements. Seems like they still should be.

Also, regarding the bit about their thrusters not being detectable. I would imagine that a minefield of millions of mines shooting off a puff of smoke should be visible as a whole.

Like forts, they don't seem to ever get much, if any, screen time. Well, as far as forts, I was correct that the MA would change that notion.

At any rate, there has to be some station keeping, or deploying them would be haphazard. Imagine kicking them out of cargo holds and there is no way to "set them up." Orienting them has to be automated with whatever station keeping means they use, or the impetus departed upon them when they are deployed would begin their initial drift.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by Theemile   » Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:35 pm

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cthia wrote:Thanks for all of the input guys. I finally broke down and went running to Wikipedia. OMG, more questions, and some answers. For instance, when watching mines being dropped off the back of ships, I wondered what keeps the tide from slamming them into each other. The wiki says that some mines float with a cable under the water. I suppose the cable acts as an anchor. In the Honorverse, what keeps millions of mines in place? What stabilizes them? Thrusters would make them visible.

I also wonder about the cost of them. I know that the RMN's missiles are insanely expensive. What about mines? Considering the technology that they deploy (the various complicated sensors, etc.), I can't imagine that they come cheap, yet they are emplaced by the millions. Wikipedia says mines can be as cheap as two-thousand dollars to as much as millions. WHAT?!

I also wonder why mines are not laid in enemy systems during raids without their knowledge. As drifting debris. The wiki says... "Although international law requires that signatory nations declare mined areas, precise locations remain secret; and non-complying individuals may not disclose minelaying."

The MAlign would be one of those non-complying individuals. It is ironic that in the HV, it is left too much up to an enemy to play nice. When it comes to EEV's and laying mines in your backyard.


Currently, the US has a plane disperse sea mine system which is a kit you bolt on a standard dumb bomb, turning it into a sea mine. they recently gave the package an upgrade allowing for a glide insertion, instead of a drop. allowing 1 plane to disperse over a wider path in 1 overflight. Those generic dumb bombs are made for 5-10K apiece and the bolt on packs with smart aerial guidance systems for less than $50K

The problem with Mines is what we've said a million times - space is big. if you drop mines at the Hyper locus attempting to interdict freighters entering/leaving a system, planetary motion will move the center of that locus by roughly 6 Million KM a day (for Earth). Factor in system gravity, Ship's wedges (which produce a gravity field), and something that was once in an important spot perfectly placed, soon is in the middle of nowhere and too widely dispersed to be effective.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by Theemile   » Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:37 pm

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cthia wrote:
At any rate, there has to be some station keeping, or deploying them would be haphazard. Imagine kicking them out of cargo holds and there is no way to "set them up." Orienting them has to be automated with whatever station keeping means they use, or the impetus departed upon them when they are deployed would begin their initial drift.


Tractor beams are probably used to stabilize them and disperse them. a Good minelayer probably is high in tractors with automated routines for placing the field.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:56 pm

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Theemile wrote:
cthia wrote:
At any rate, there has to be some station keeping, or deploying them would be haphazard. Imagine kicking them out of cargo holds and there is no way to "set them up." Orienting them has to be automated with whatever station keeping means they use, or the impetus departed upon them when they are deployed would begin their initial drift.


Tractor beams are probably used to stabilize them and disperse them. a Good minelayer probably is high in tractors with automated routines for placing the field.

It is difficult to envision it done with tractors. First off, I didn't know tractors could be so gentle. Stabilizing instead of tugging. Although admittedly, my exposure to Star Trek is probably the blame. Even so, trying to picture in my head tractor beams being used to lay then stabilize mines with the ability to lay millions of mines seems very time consuming, thus impossible on a practical tactical scale. Which is why I stated upstream that they can't possibly have a practical tactical use.

Also, minelayers would have to proceed very slowly it would seem, if tractors are an integral part of stabilizing them. Trying to stabilize a lot of mines while your ship is moving sounds difficult. And totally not my idea or understanding of how tractors operate. Using tractors for retrieval seems logical. But just because I can't imagine it doesn't make it so. I suppose a tractor beam and a presser beam can be used simultaneously under computer control of the instant their forces cancel each other out. Voila, instant stabilization.

I suppose minelayers and mine-laying is a painfully slow process.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Dec 01, 2021 9:33 pm

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cthia wrote:It is difficult to envision it done with tractors. First off, I didn't know tractors could be so gentle, stabilizing instead of tugging. Although admittedly, my exposure to StarTrek is probably the blame. Even so, trying to picture in my head tractor beams being used to lay then stabilize mines with the rapidity of laying minefields with millions of mines seem very time consuming. Which is why I stated upstream that they can't possibly have a practical tactical use. Also, minelayers would have to proceed very slowly it would seem, if tractors are an integral part of stabilizing them. Trying to stabilize a lot of mines while your ship is moving sounds difficult. And totally not my idea or understanding of how tractors operate. Using tractors for retrieval seems logical. But just because I can't imagine it doesn't make it so. I suppose a tractor beam and a presser beam can be used simultaneously under computer control of the instant their forces cancel each other out. Voila, instant stabilization.
The book is silent on the methods, but I'll note that the first time we saw minelayers, at Hancock in SVW, they seem to have originally planned to deploy the mines by fast moving ships under high acceleration; for a very practical tactical use.

Here's Honor's original sketch of a plan
Short Victorious War wrote:The objection made sense, since the mines were simply old-fashioned bomb-pumped lasers. They were cheap but good for only a single shot each, and their accuracy was less than outstanding, which made them most effective when employed en masse against ships moving at low velocities. That meant they were usually emplaced for area coverage of relatively immobile targets like wormhole junctions, planets, or orbital bases . . . where, as Banton had just pointed out, the Peeps would expect to see them. But putting them where the Peeps expected wasn't what Honor had in mind.
"Actually, Ma'am, I've been looking at the drive specs on the layers, and we might be able to use them more advantageously than that."
"Oh?" Banton cocked her head—consideringly, not in challenge—and Honor nodded.
"Yes, Ma'am. The Erebus-class ships are fast—almost as fast as a battlecruiser—and they're configured for rapid, mass mine emplacement. If we could make the Peeps think they are battlecruisers and operate them with the rest of our force, then kick the mines out in the Peeps' path . . ."
She let her voice trail off suggestively, and Banton gave a sudden, fierce snort of laughter.
"I like it, Admiral!" she told Sarnow. "It's sneaky as hell, and it might just work."
"Assuming the Peeps don't shoot at them and give the show away," Commodore Prentis observed. "Minelayers don't have much in the way of point defense, and their sidewalls aren't much, either. You'd be asking their captains to run an awful risk, Dame Honor."
"We could cover them fairly well against missile attack by tying them into our divisional tac nets, Sir," Honor countered. "There are only five of them. We could include one in each division's net and hook the odd man out into Nike's and Agamemnon's net. The Peeps won't be able to tell exactly where our defensive fire is coming from, so they shouldn't be able to ID them at any extended range. And for us to make the mines work, we'd have to use them before we got to beam range, anyway."
"And if they spot the mines?" Prentis was thinking aloud, not arguing, and Honor allowed herself a small shrug.
"Their fire control's a hundred percent passive, Sir. They don't have active emission signatures, and they're mighty small radar targets. I doubt the Peeps could spot them at much more than a million klicks, especially if they're busy chasing us."

That'd be a rapid mass minefield deployment, while under fire, from 5 high speed ships which would presumably be retreating at the squadron's best military acceleration. (I think the slowest ships would have been the older Homer and Redoubtable-class BC, with 490 and 491.5 gees respectively at full emergency power; Nike was larger but she had one of the first improved Grayson compensators which seems to have pushed her up to 502.7 gees full emergency). And Honor clearly though that a rapid deployment at those accelerations would be tactically useful.


Though in the event, that plan was superseded by Sarnow's later plan to keep the minelayers back near Hancock base, and use FTL to signal them to come out and lay a minefield behind Sarnow's forward deployed squadron. (At "ninety-eight million klicks out", presumably out from the Hancock base). It'd take a few hours just to get out there are back; but the inner system was beyond the range of the Peep's onboard sensors - so the minelayers couldn't be seen coming out and then back to the base to pick up evacuees.

They were later detected, by the Peep's Argus surveillance net, as they were breaking towards the hyper limit on the far side of the system with "Acceleration about four-point-niner KPS squared"; which is to say 500 gees. Given that they seem to be build on something like a battlecruiser sized hull that implies two things. One that they were built with, or upgrade to, at least the same generation of Grayson compensator that Nike was, and two, that they were evacuating at full emergency power; not the normal military max of 80%. (Even at the emergency power setting Nike, with her Grayson inspired compensator, could only better that by a couple gees)

Now that I see that I'm surprised that the Peeps didn't comment on how that accel was too high for a BC. They shouldn't have know about the Grayson compensators yet, but without them (as seen above) the RMN BC's couldn't hit 500 gees even under emergency power. The much smaller Star Knight-class CA could just barely do that, and even a DD of the time couldn't do that without exceeding the 80% military max power setting...


Anyway, sorry for the digressions. But the fact that Honor's initial thought for the minelayers wasn't immediately dismissed as impossible seems to show that, whatever mechanism they use, they are thought capable of quickly deploying a useful minefield while under high acceleration.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by Relax   » Wed Dec 01, 2021 9:57 pm

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Should be 2 types of mines; offensive(stealthy mines), defensive very obvious mines for your own WHJ

As for minesweeper... Uh, EVERY SINGLE warship is a minesweeper with their wedges + PDLC's with active RADAR/LIDAR.

NIT... a Big Graser mine could outrange PDLC's. So, take them out with LAC Grasers... finding them = the usual.

Obviously with mines, it is a question of Quantity overwhelming.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Wed Dec 01, 2021 11:11 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:You're right, tiling the entire hyperlimit sphere would require far more than 50 emplacements. Given a full system's output, it might be possible to do that, in time. It wouldn't be easy and until you do, it might do nothing more than piss off the attacker without damaging their paint. If you can't launch tens of thousands of missiles, it might be better not to do it, since a concentrated GF will just take anything smaller with CMs.

So until then, they'd probably protect the Darius Gamma planet with one or more layers of spherical sections facing the least-time course. Attacks from the other side of the system would take too long to arrive, which gives the defenders the opportunity to reposition mobile forces.


While I think there are layers they're going to be around Darius. They don't have anything like the capacity to put a meaningful layer around the hyper limit.

And while layers of CM pods will give them additional shots at the inbounds they're even more vulnerable to EW than the normal point defense launchers. They'll probably stop the first salvo, but they will have revealed their capability at that point and the next salvo will spread out their EW.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Wed Dec 01, 2021 11:29 pm

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cthia wrote:The books depict missiles oftentimes as interpenetrating the enemy's launches. If a 3-second-firing graser can spin fast enough while in the midst of that launch, it should be able to get most of them. Apollo launches stay tightly packed.


I strongly disagree. Let's assume they are MDMs fired near max range. When they interpenetrate they are going to be moving around .35c each, thus about .62c relative to each other (assuming the launchers aren't moving too fast.) In those three seconds of graser fire the missiles move more than 500,000km relative to each other. Not to mention that missiles have wedges, most hits will do nothing at all.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by tlb   » Thu Dec 02, 2021 12:48 am

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cthia wrote:The books depict missiles oftentimes as interpenetrating the enemy's launches. If a 3-second-firing graser can spin fast enough while in the midst of that launch, it should be able to get most of them. Apollo launches stay tightly packed.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I strongly disagree. Let's assume they are MDMs fired near max range. When they interpenetrate they are going to be moving around .35c each, thus about .62c relative to each other (assuming the launchers aren't moving too fast.) In those three seconds of graser fire the missiles move more than 500,000km relative to each other. Not to mention that missiles have wedges, most hits will do nothing at all.

Also of note, only the group of missiles in one pod stay grouped together (8 weapon carrying missiles, plus the Apollo controller missile). However there may be thousand of pods launched and the missiles from different pods stay as far apart as the pre-Apollo launched missiles did.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Thu Dec 02, 2021 12:54 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:
cthia wrote:It is difficult to envision it done with tractors. First off, I didn't know tractors could be so gentle, stabilizing instead of tugging. Although admittedly, my exposure to StarTrek is probably the blame. Even so, trying to picture in my head tractor beams being used to lay then stabilize mines with the rapidity of laying minefields with millions of mines seem very time consuming. Which is why I stated upstream that they can't possibly have a practical tactical use. Also, minelayers would have to proceed very slowly it would seem, if tractors are an integral part of stabilizing them. Trying to stabilize a lot of mines while your ship is moving sounds difficult. And totally not my idea or understanding of how tractors operate. Using tractors for retrieval seems logical. But just because I can't imagine it doesn't make it so. I suppose a tractor beam and a presser beam can be used simultaneously under computer control of the instant their forces cancel each other out. Voila, instant stabilization.
The book is silent on the methods, but I'll note that the first time we saw minelayers, at Hancock in SVW, they seem to have originally planned to deploy the mines by fast moving ships under high acceleration; for a very practical tactical use.

Here's Honor's original sketch of a plan
Short Victorious War wrote:The objection made sense, since the mines were simply old-fashioned bomb-pumped lasers. They were cheap but good for only a single shot each, and their accuracy was less than outstanding, which made them most effective when employed en masse against ships moving at low velocities. That meant they were usually emplaced for area coverage of relatively immobile targets like wormhole junctions, planets, or orbital bases . . . where, as Banton had just pointed out, the Peeps would expect to see them. But putting them where the Peeps expected wasn't what Honor had in mind.
"Actually, Ma'am, I've been looking at the drive specs on the layers, and we might be able to use them more advantageously than that."
"Oh?" Banton cocked her head—consideringly, not in challenge—and Honor nodded.
"Yes, Ma'am. The Erebus-class ships are fast—almost as fast as a battlecruiser—and they're configured for rapid, mass mine emplacement. If we could make the Peeps think they are battlecruisers and operate them with the rest of our force, then kick the mines out in the Peeps' path . . ."
She let her voice trail off suggestively, and Banton gave a sudden, fierce snort of laughter.
"I like it, Admiral!" she told Sarnow. "It's sneaky as hell, and it might just work."
"Assuming the Peeps don't shoot at them and give the show away," Commodore Prentis observed. "Minelayers don't have much in the way of point defense, and their sidewalls aren't much, either. You'd be asking their captains to run an awful risk, Dame Honor."
"We could cover them fairly well against missile attack by tying them into our divisional tac nets, Sir," Honor countered. "There are only five of them. We could include one in each division's net and hook the odd man out into Nike's and Agamemnon's net. The Peeps won't be able to tell exactly where our defensive fire is coming from, so they shouldn't be able to ID them at any extended range. And for us to make the mines work, we'd have to use them before we got to beam range, anyway."
"And if they spot the mines?" Prentis was thinking aloud, not arguing, and Honor allowed herself a small shrug.
"Their fire control's a hundred percent passive, Sir. They don't have active emission signatures, and they're mighty small radar targets. I doubt the Peeps could spot them at much more than a million klicks, especially if they're busy chasing us."

That'd be a rapid mass minefield deployment, while under fire, from 5 high speed ships which would presumably be retreating at the squadron's best military acceleration. (I think the slowest ships would have been the older Homer and Redoubtable-class BC, with 490 and 491.5 gees respectively at full emergency power; Nike was larger but she had one of the first improved Grayson compensators which seems to have pushed her up to 502.7 gees full emergency). And Honor clearly though that a rapid deployment at those accelerations would be tactically useful.


Though in the event, that plan was superseded by Sarnow's later plan to keep the minelayers back near Hancock base, and use FTL to signal them to come out and lay a minefield behind Sarnow's forward deployed squadron. (At "ninety-eight million klicks out", presumably out from the Hancock base). It'd take a few hours just to get out there are back; but the inner system was beyond the range of the Peep's onboard sensors - so the minelayers couldn't be seen coming out and then back to the base to pick up evacuees.

They were later detected, by the Peep's Argus surveillance net, as they were breaking towards the hyper limit on the far side of the system with "Acceleration about four-point-niner KPS squared"; which is to say 500 gees. Given that they seem to be build on something like a battlecruiser sized hull that implies two things. One that they were built with, or upgrade to, at least the same generation of Grayson compensator that Nike was, and two, that they were evacuating at full emergency power; not the normal military max of 80%. (Even at the emergency power setting Nike, with her Grayson inspired compensator, could only better that by a couple gees)

Now that I see that I'm surprised that the Peeps didn't comment on how that accel was too high for a BC. They shouldn't have know about the Grayson compensators yet, but without them (as seen above) the RMN BC's couldn't hit 500 gees even under emergency power. The much smaller Star Knight-class CA could just barely do that, and even a DD of the time couldn't do that without exceeding the 80% military max power setting...


Anyway, sorry for the digressions. But the fact that Honor's initial thought for the minelayers wasn't immediately dismissed as impossible seems to show that, whatever mechanism they use, they are thought capable of quickly deploying a useful minefield while under high acceleration.

Thanks for regurgitating that text. But yes, in that manner I can see them having a practical tactical use; throwing them down haphazardly like nails in front of oncoming vehicles. That is how I suggested the LDs could deploy them upstream. But I doubt that they are stabilized minefields. Of course, being used in such an immediately manner, they wouldn't have to be stabilized. It still makes you wonder how they are ejected if they can be deployed so effectively while the ship is moving at such speeds. What is the size of a mine as opposed to a missile? And, are mines shaped like our mines today.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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