Attacking Darius:

Strategy and Tactics
The shortest, and least complex route from hyper to a planet or some installation in a planetary or solar orbit appears to be you come out of hyper on the ecliptic relative to where the destination is calculated would be based on historic data and come in. In the same idea, leaving is normally at least staying in the ecliptic and heading out. The primary variations we have seen are typically ships running in the opposite direction from approaching trouble -usually a warship or two- and the alternatives multiply from there. When you have enough attacking ships you can have some of them do a variation on hanging in hyper at expected or close to expected escape tracks to hyper and send out couriers back into hyper in the "Paul Revere" move to transmit the tactical data on fleeing ships so they can be intercepted by the hyper stalking ships dropping into normal space in front of them.
The obvious alternative is run in from an North or South -relative to the ecliptic- and all the system defenses are not oriented to you. On the other hand, if orbital defenses are scattered around the orbital path of the planet(s) involved, you have unmasked yourself to launchers what would have been even partialy screened by the planet or the star.
Any way you want to look at it, your going to have to put at least a lite screen of sensors in a globe pattern around the system so you are not caught completely by surprise if someone comes out of hyper in an unusual place relative to the ecliptic.

I think it has been proven that Darius is not going to be an easy nut to crack. Especially considering the many mistakes Honor made attacking Galton.

Filareta's orders included hypering in carrying accel while hugging the limit so that he could hyper out at the first sign of trouble. Would that be advisable against Darius? Carrying too much accel could work against you. Flighty insects fly right into a spider's web. And sitting like ducks isn't advisable either. Early on in the thread, I suggested that the MA would use the GA's accel advantage against them.

While reading TEiF, did anyone else feel a bit of anxiety about the who's who in Honor's order of battle? She was name-dropping like the Queen of Manticore. I thought for certain a lot of very important people were going to die. So much so that I dared question including so many of the best of the best. Talk about putting all of your eggs in one basket. I understand the logic of it. But the MA could have truly hit the lottery with one very big roll of the die; that being a truly massive Alpha launch. Especially if it was timed to arrive just before the shock of g-torps.

The new wrinkle the MA produced by developing pods for countermissiles begs a question. First, those countermissiles also had an incredible range. Isn't it dangerous to launch CMs too soon against FTL missiles. Wouldn't that give them enough time to divert around them? The RMN diverted around Shannon's Triple Ripple once they were aware of it.

cthia wrote:Filareta's orders included hypering in carrying accel while hugging the limit so that he could hyper out at the first sign of trouble. Would that be advisable against Darius? Carrying too much accel could work against you. Flighty insects fly right into a spider's web. And sitting like ducks isn't advisable either. Early on in the thread, I suggested that the MA would use the GA's accel advantage against them.

Thought there's only so much velocity you can even bring across the Alpha wall. The absolute highest possible velocity a military ship could be moving at after exiting hyper is 14,390 kps. That's not slow, about 0.05c, but it's also less than an RMN SD(P) could achieve in 40 minutes of acceleration. And that's assuming they paused in the Alpha bands to spend hours working back up to their maximum (for hyperspace) 0.6c velocity.

If they'd done the more common approach of a continuous transition starting from the Delta bands (or higher) they'd be able to retain no more that about 1% of that velocity.

cthia wrote:The new wrinkle the MA produced by developing pods for countermissiles begs a question. First, those countermissiles also had an incredible range. Isn't it dangerous to launch CMs too soon against FTL missiles. Wouldn't that give them enough time to divert around them? The RMN diverted around Shannon's Triple Ripple once they were aware of it.

That depends...... 1st you our your misses have to see the pods in time to divert. If they are scattered like a minefield (for Galton it's part of the static defense which could be multiple fields, each relative to a fort or orbital installation.
2nd you have to have some way of keeping the targeting updated for the CMs which means you either have the sensors on each pod or you are sending the tactical data from another location. Do you have FTL with the bandwidth to deliver that information to multiple CMs in how many? pods fast enough to launch at the incoming missiles?

At worst, you send your tac instructions to the pods and tell them when and where to launch at based on the projected tracks of the targets and hope that the CMs enter an intercept envelope for their wedges before the targets pass through the engagement window. Given the speeds of both the CMs and what should be accelerating missiles, that is a short window.
On the other hand, if you layer your defenses of pods, you can engage the missiles with layers of CMs. Heck, depending on the bandwidth available you might even be only using enough of any given layer of pods that you can pass the information to in one launch batch and still have pods in that layer of minefield to engage a 2nd or "the next" volley comming at you. Given you are talking massive forts etc at Galton, there will most likely need a 2nd or 3rd launch against any given target. Messy, very messy.

Heck, if you are A GA force, you could have you missile defence LACs all towing pods of CMs and -iffy situation- go running out into the firing solution for your advisory and drop the pods before shifting vectors and hopefully get out of that path so you can shoot into the attacking missiles with CMs and light speed weapons for anti-missile work and use the capasity of the pods for down-the-throat shots at the incoming missiles. But that would require GA level FTL capasity and tactical bandwidth control. Still, if you have 10 or so CMs in each pod and you get 50% (being optimistic here) success rate, that is 5 missiles per pod that don't get into your ship mounted CM and light speed defense envelope. IF 2 pods per LAC x 90 LACs and a 50% kill ratio that's 900 missiles that don't make it to your ship mounted defenses, just from those pods.. Ok, that's for the first attack but every bit counts.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Peaceful forces arrive on the ecliptic. Warfleets are under no such obligation. You need 2,500 emplacements--and I think you'll get tiling problems, if memory is serving me right you'll need 3,500 emplacements to ensure every point is within 50mkm--and that's assuming the visitors show up at the hyper limit.

Indeed, but arrive on the hyperlimit, on the ecliptic, on the least-time course, is exactly what Honor did. I was going "wtf" when reading that passage.

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.

Brigade XO wrote:Strategy and Tactics
The shortest, and least complex route from hyper to a planet or some installation in a planetary or solar orbit appears to be you come out of hyper on the ecliptic relative to where the destination is calculated would be based on historic data and come in. In the same idea, leaving is normally at least staying in the ecliptic and heading out. The primary variations we have seen are typically ships running in the opposite direction from approaching trouble -usually a warship or two- and the alternatives multiply from there. When you have enough attacking ships you can have some of them do a variation on hanging in hyper at expected or close to expected escape tracks to hyper and send out couriers back into hyper in the "Paul Revere" move to transmit the tactical data on fleeing ships so they can be intercepted by the hyper stalking ships dropping into normal space in front of them.
The obvious alternative is run in from an North or South -relative to the ecliptic- and all the system defenses are not oriented to you. On the other hand, if orbital defenses are scattered around the orbital path of the planet(s) involved, you have unmasked yourself to launchers what would have been even partialy screened by the planet or the star.
Any way you want to look at it, your going to have to put at least a lite screen of sensors in a globe pattern around the system so you are not caught completely by surprise if someone comes out of hyper in an unusual place relative to the ecliptic.

I still think the MA can be the first Navy to adopt attacking in hyper as a mainstay. If a navy can predict the most probable approach vectors in n-space can't the enemy also predict the most likely paths traveled in hyper and lie doggo? Especially if a warning of an impending attack (via O'Hanrahan) gives you time to prepare a proper reception.

Can mines or other ordnance be laid in hyper?

cthia wrote:I still think the MA can be the first Navy to adopt attacking in hyper as a mainstay. If a navy can predict the most probable approach vectors in n-space can't the enemy also predict the most likely paths traveled in hyper and lie doggo? Especially if a warning of an impending attack (via O'Hanrahan) gives you time to prepare a proper reception.

Yes, it's very easy to predict that. But given that it is that easy and yet not done, it would imply there's something we don't know that makes the attack difficult. Pirates know exactly where merchants are expected to emerge from alpha. So why not wait in alpha, so they can't be detected even by chance by someone defending forces in n-space?

Also, not via Audrey. She believes her Alignment is peaceful. She'd never knowingly assist in a military operation. Unknowingly, that's another story. But the MAlign has plenty of agents left, so they don't need her for this.

Can mines or other ordnance be laid in hyper?

Unknown.

cthia wrote:I still think the MA can be the first Navy to adopt attacking in hyper as a mainstay. If a navy can predict the most probable approach vectors in n-space can't the enemy also predict the most likely paths traveled in hyper and lie doggo? Especially if a warning of an impending attack (via O'Hanrahan) gives you time to prepare a proper reception.

Can mines or other ordnance be laid in hyper?

Depends.

For anyone else you wouldn't be able to economically or effectively lay them within a grav wave. Items in there require stabilization to avoid being torn apart by the grav turbulence; and the only known method is at least one full sail. That's big, expensive, and worse visible to FTL grav sensors. Plus you can't use wedges inside the grav wave so no missiles; the enemy would need to pass within about 50,000 km of the mine for it to have any hope of damaging them.
The unknown is the spider drive. RFC strongly implied that Lenny Dets would be able to use wormholes (which have similar stabilization requirements). That may just mean they also mount sails. But I guess there's a tiny change that the spider drive can itself provide that stabilization. If that's true (and it's probably 99% likely that it's not) then they could leave graser torps in wait with spider drive active in a grav wave.

If you're outside a grav wave then there's no reason you couldn't lay down minefields or other ordinance. All the normal drives and weapons work in those rifts. (However FTL is far less FTL in hyper; so grav sensors are laggier and FTL comms and fire control are less instantanious).

However there are still issues with trying.
One, hyperspace is vast and you need very little course variation (whether deliberate or through navigational uncertainties) to pass many millions of km off the optimal course. As bad as trying to mine an entire star system would be, trying to mine it's hyper approaches would be worse.

Two, hyperspace has bands. A mine in the Alpha bands is irrelivant to a ship passing "over" that spot in any other band. And while you do pass through the Alpha bands on your way into or out of hyper you travel very little distance in them while doing so. So there's a good chance your defenses are in the wrong hyper band(s).

Three, sensor range sucks and ships are moving fast. Outside of a very few special cases (like Silesia's Selker Rift) a ship in hyper is going to spend almost all its time at the highest speed its particle shields can handle (so 0.5c; or 0.6c if it's got mil grade shielding). Even if you've got mobile forces most of the time even a target passing into your small sensor range will be out the other side long before you can pull into weapons range of them - and remember because of the FTL issues your sensors are giving you more out of date information than you're used to. Even an MDM would have trouble keeping a crossing target at 0.6c within its sensors as it'd take it over 6 minutes to even match their velocity and being to overtake.

Four, hyperspace is an unfriendly environment that will degrade mines or other ordinance deployed there far faster than normal space would.



So to try to mine even your hyperspace approaches, assuming your system isn't in a grav wave, you'd need probably thousands of times more mines that it would take to mine your entire hyper limit - and they'd need maintenance or replacement probably at least 10 times as frequently as normal emplacement. And even then the enemy might never pass through any part of that ludicrously large mine field. It'd be cheaper to buy yourself a couple full fleets.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I still think the MA can be the first Navy to adopt attacking in hyper as a mainstay. If a navy can predict the most probable approach vectors in n-space can't the enemy also predict the most likely paths traveled in hyper and lie doggo? Especially if a warning of an impending attack (via O'Hanrahan) gives you time to prepare a proper reception.

Can mines or other ordnance be laid in hyper?

Depends.

For anyone else you wouldn't be able to economically or effectively lay them within a grav wave. Items in there require stabilization to avoid being torn apart by the grav turbulence; and the only known method is at least one full sail. That's big, expensive, and worse visible to FTL grav sensors. Plus you can't use wedges inside the grav wave so no missiles; the enemy would need to pass within about 50,000 km of the mine for it to have any hope of damaging them.
The unknown is the spider drive. RFC strongly implied that Lenny Dets would be able to use wormholes (which have similar stabilization requirements). That may just mean they also mount sails. But I guess there's a tiny change that the spider drive can itself provide that stabilization. If that's true (and it's probably 99% likely that it's not) then they could leave graser torps in wait with spider drive active in a grav wave.

If you're outside a grav wave then there's no reason you couldn't lay down minefields or other ordinance. All the normal drives and weapons work in those rifts. (However FTL is far less FTL in hyper; so grav sensors are laggier and FTL comms and fire control are less instantanious).

However there are still issues with trying.
One, hyperspace is vast and you need very little course variation (whether deliberate or through navigational uncertainties) to pass many millions of km off the optimal course. As bad as trying to mine an entire star system would be, trying to mine it's hyper approaches would be worse.

Two, hyperspace has bands. A mine in the Alpha bands is irrelivant to a ship passing "over" that spot in any other band. And while you do pass through the Alpha bands on your way into or out of hyper you travel very little distance in them while doing so. So there's a good chance your defenses are in the wrong hyper band(s).

Three, sensor range sucks and ships are moving fast. Outside of a very few special cases (like Silesia's Selker Rift) a ship in hyper is going to spend almost all its time at the highest speed its particle shields can handle (so 0.5c; or 0.6c if it's got mil grade shielding). Even if you've got mobile forces most of the time even a target passing into your small sensor range will be out the other side long before you can pull into weapons range of them - and remember because of the FTL issues your sensors are giving you more out of date information than you're used to. Even an MDM would have trouble keeping a crossing target at 0.6c within its sensors as it'd take it over 6 minutes to even match their velocity and being to overtake.

Four, hyperspace is an unfriendly environment that will degrade mines or other ordinance deployed there far faster than normal space would.



So to try to mine even your hyperspace approaches, assuming your system isn't in a grav wave, you'd need probably thousands of times more mines that it would take to mine your entire hyper limit - and they'd need maintenance or replacement probably at least 10 times as frequently as normal emplacement. And even then the enemy might never pass through any part of that ludicrously large mine field. It'd be cheaper to buy yourself a couple full fleets.

Drats. This approach was going to be my answer to destroying the RMN's fleet train. Graser platforms should also be considered. The effective range of energy weapons is greater in hyper, isn't it? Targeting may be a problem, but still, there shouldn't be a need for nearly as many platforms.