The Alamo Contingency has already failed

Jonathan_S wrote::D Tell that to the interwar US Navy. Their attack doctrine was to fire while submerged off of hydrophone bearing because it was presumed to be too risky to use a periscope within torpedo range of an enemy formation.

That's pretty timid. (Especially since hydrophones couldn't give accurate enough range and bearing data to really aim the torpedo -- so it was more 'hide in front of the enemy formation and once they sound loud enough dump all your torpedoes in their general direction')

Come wartime it took new, more aggressive, submarine commanders before the USN subs really started achieving results. (Though, of course, the many and well documented issues with their Mk14 torpedoes didn't help -- but if they'd stuck to their timid pre-war tactics they would have had a much harder time working out that there was something wrong with their bloody torpedoes)

The analogy with subs breaks completely down when you consider the cost of an LD. Those are actually capital ships, with a crew of thousands, and a build time of about 3 years after the yards hit stride. They must cost more than the annual GDP of all but a very small selection of Core systems and some others with a big population (say, 5 billion). Anything else would not have the economic capacity to build one, let alone a squadron of them.

So they can't be used like they grow on trees, because they don't. Each one you lose is a huge loss in capital, even for the very-skewed Darius economy.

The MAlign may not have to pay the bills on Darius, but it's at a minimum a cost of opportunity: with the resources and time consumed, they could probably have built 3 Sharks or half a dozen Nike-sized ships.

So, no, the MAlign will not be too aggressive with them. That in turn means that their intended use must be something different and the MAlign strategists have concluded they have a high chance at success in this.

penny wrote:

Thinksmarkedly wrote:Indeed. They know what they're looking for, so they probably have the best sensors at detecting that. Probably, not definitely: they don't know what they don't know about sensors.

An interesting conclusion from this is that the GA probably has the best sensors for detecting low-power-wedge-driven vessels and the MA has the best sensors for detecting spider-drive ships, but they both don't have good sensors for detecting the other's vessels.

Can you elaborate on this. Wedges can be seen from another system. Are you simply lumping warships and drones together?

What? No, wedges can't be seen from another system. A good ship-borne gravitic sensor has a horizon of less than one light-hour, which is plenty for any ships operating inside a hyperlimit. Static, orbital sensors can probably scale that to several light-hours. The Manticore hyper footprint sensors raised that to a light-month, but they could only detect the footprint of a hyper translation, not the wedges themselves.

What I meant to say was that I took your observation of "Can you see me now?" "Nope." to its logical conclusion that the GA would have done that to their own stealth drones, which use low-power wedges. Therefore, the GA sensors are probably best at detecting other wedges, but not necessarily at detecting active spiders. Conversely, the MAlign doesn't have first-hand experience with attempting to detect Ghost Rider drones, so their sensors are probably not as good at detecting those low-power wedges, but may be the best at detecting spiders.

It occurs to me that the best option for the MAlign to have gathered data on the Ghost Riders wasn't actually at Beowulf, but during the Battle of Galton. The problem there is getting the data out and we've discussed a lot about whether they could and would have done that.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:At any rate, I asked you for the post you were referring to because I thought I had missed it because it was in another thread. I had already consumed the one you were referring to the first time. I didn't think you were referring to that post, because it is specifically discussing the Ghosts. Not the LD. The Ghosts were a rushed testbed as much as Fearless was. I don't expect the Ghost stealth to be as effective as an LD.

Correction - it was the Sharks were the testbed, then unexpectedly pushed into a combat role. Though there's no evidence that their stealth design was rushed - after all one of the things they'd be testbedding would be the stealth technology to be incorporated into the combat units. They'd make pretty crappy test platforms if their stealth was sub-par -- the MAlign needed that real world sensor information on the actual strengths and weaknesses of their stealth systems in order to hope to devise appropriate tactics for best utilizing it.
Still, there's at least room to argue that the MAlign might have learned enough from that real-world testing to improve the stealth fits of the follow-on ship designs in some way that wasn't practical to retrofit back into the existing Sharks; leaving the Sharks a somewhat inferior stealth capability. (Though there's no evidence provided either way)


But, in any case, the Ghosts were NOT a testbed.

As one of those follow-on designs The Ghost-class had always been designed to scout for, and when necessary provide forward fire control (via deploying stealthy fire control relays) for the Lenny Dets. So, as the ships that would be skulking around behind enemy lines the longest, they'd have the very best stealth the MAlign could cram into them. And even so they're worried about recon drones that manage to get to their rear...

It is the lack of smart paint that I thought the 'Sharks' (now that I have been corrected) were rushed.

penny wrote:

Thinksmarkedly wrote:Indeed. They know what they're looking for, so they probably have the best sensors at detecting that. Probably, not definitely: they don't know what they don't know about sensors.

An interesting conclusion from this is that the GA probably has the best sensors for detecting low-power-wedge-driven vessels and the MA has the best sensors for detecting spider-drive ships, but they both don't have good sensors for detecting the other's vessels.

Can you elaborate on this. Wedges can be seen from another system. Are you simply lumping warships and drones together?

Thinksmarkedly wrote:What? No, wedges can't be seen from another system. A good ship-borne gravitic sensor has a horizon of less than one light-hour, which is plenty for any ships operating inside a hyperlimit. Static, orbital sensors can probably scale that to several light-hours. The Manticore hyper footprint sensors raised that to a light-month, but they could only detect the footprint of a hyper translation, not the wedges themselves.

What I meant to say was that I took your observation of "Can you see me now?" "Nope." to its logical conclusion that the GA would have done that to their own stealth drones, which use low-power wedges. Therefore, the GA sensors are probably best at detecting other wedges, but not necessarily at detecting active spiders. Conversely, the MAlign doesn't have first-hand experience with attempting to detect Ghost Rider drones, so their sensors are probably not as good at detecting those low-power wedges, but may be the best at detecting spiders.

It occurs to me that the best option for the MAlign to have gathered data on the Ghost Riders wasn't actually at Beowulf, but during the Battle of Galton. The problem there is getting the data out and we've discussed a lot about whether they could and would have done that.

I was being facetious about being able to see a sun (wedge) from another system. LOL

Exactly! That was a point I was trying to make upstream about Galton and I was going to elaborate on it!

At any rate, that was why I didn't think Galton was a retcon.

1. The GA really needed some experience with MA tech, strategy and tactics. I said long ago that it wouldn't be realistic for the author to throw the GA into a real battle with the MA and have them win without SOME experience first.

Let's be realistic. If the MA had not prematurely exposed themselves until attacking the MBS in an opening war, the MBS would have been toast.

2. The MA really needed a chance to test their product. At Galton, Adebayo specifically wished the GA would tip their hand by destroying either or both of the Alpha or Beta drones.

penny wrote:At any rate, that was why I didn't think Galton was a retcon.

1. The GA really needed some experience with MA tech, strategy and tactics. I said long ago that it wouldn't be realistic for the author to throw the GA into a real battle with the MA and have them win without SOME experience first.

2. The MA really needed a chance to test their product. At Galton, Adebayo specifically wished the GA would tip their hand by destroying either or both of the Alpha or Beta drones.

Interesting theory. What I am understanding is that Galton is not a new retcon, but instead a consequence of the compressed timeline that started with Crown of Slaves, when David gave Eric the MAlign to be the bad guys. The original plan was, or so we've been told, that the fight with the SLN would have lasted longer, with the SLN having the ability to realise just how far behind they were. That would have meant the MAlign would get data too and would therefore be able to adapt strategies and hardware.

If there were no Galton, then the MAlign would get no data, and therefore would only have crappy strategies, leading to a quick defeat at the hands of the GA.

Is that it?

penny wrote:It is the lack of smart paint that I thought the 'Sharks' (now that I have been corrected) were rushed.

Why are you saying they lack "smart paint"? The only reason we know about "smart paint" is because chapter 9 of Mission of Honor describes its use on the Ghost-class ships (the text I posted in this thread). We have no reason to suppose that the Shark-class ships lack that stealthy capability.

penny wrote:I didn't think even Haven was aware the GR drones existed when they were first unleashed. I thought it was after the fact that it was determined that something like GR must have been used. Am I wrong about that?

When they were first used? No, Haven didn't seem to have a clue.
But that was during the first war -- by five years later, when the ceasefire failed and the second war began, Haven knew more or less what they were, were aware they used grav pulse FTL, and was reasonably good at determining when they were hovering around their fleets.

penny wrote:Question:

Shouldn't a stationary platform be inherently more stealthy than a drone? Or is it?

Not when it's (periodically) transmitting.

The Silver Bullets found the Mycroft fire control relays by slipping inside of them, detecting scatter from the (somewhat directional, but hardly narrow beam) grav pulse FTL used in periodic system checks of the array by its central control and slowly backtracking -- getting a bit closer to the relay each time they caught the edge of a transmission. (Ironically if the Mycroft array had used whisker lasers for system checks, and not grav pulse they likely wouldn't have been found and taken out -- OTOH if you don't at least occasionally test the grav pulse transmitters you won't know if the break; at least not until you need them for real)

Only once tracing the transmissions got them close did they appear to be able to finally nail down and slip into energy range of the relays.

A Silver Bullet trying to trace down a transmitting Ghost Rider drone would have a far harder time as the drone keeps moving (and can do so in pretty good stealth while accelerating around 20 times faster than the best a graser torp, and thus presumably also a Silver Bullet, can do) so you catch a transmission, start moving towards it, and not only is it not staying there but there's a good chance it'll have moved enough that you won't even catch any of its next transmission.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:It is the lack of smart paint that I thought the 'Sharks' (now that I have been corrected) were rushed.

Why are you saying they lack "smart paint"? The only reason we know about "smart paint" is because chapter 9 of Mission of Honor describes its use on the Ghost-class ships (the text I posted in this thread). We have no reason to suppose that the Shark-class ships lack that stealthy capability.

I could be misremembering this. But your own post goes into detail about the upgraded smart paint of the Ghosts.

And RFC didn't drop us the little snippet about smart paint that caused a tizzy in the forum until well after Oyster Bay.

As I understand it, ALL ships, even GA ships, have some form of smart paint. No?

penny wrote:I could be misremembering this. But your own post goes into detail about the upgraded smart paint of the Ghosts.

And RFC didn't drop us the little snippet about smart paint that caused a tizzy in the forum until well after Oyster Bay.

As I understand it, ALL ships, even GA ships, have some form of smart paint. No?

The text I posted in this thread begins with the statement:

Unlike the starships of most navies, the MAN's scouts hadn't settled for simple smart paint.

penny wrote:I could be misremembering this. But your own post goes into detail about the upgraded smart paint of the Ghosts.

And RFC didn't drop us the little snippet about smart paint that caused a tizzy in the forum until well after Oyster Bay.

As I understand it, ALL ships, even GA ships, have some form of smart paint. No?

The Mission of Honor does talk just about Ghosts having the upgraded stealth; but it certainly doesn't say the Sharks lack it. And that text is in the context of the captain of a Ghost ruminating about its capabilities -- he'd have no particular reason to be explicit, in his own mind, about whether or not that upgrade was unique to the Ghosts (among the MAlign spider ships) - the key thing to him at that time is what capabilities the ship he's aboard has.



But yes, basically all modern warships have some degree of smart paint.

House of Steel even mentions how Manticore used it as part of their efforts to initially disguise the specifications of the then brand new Star Knight-class heavy cruisers. (Though admittedly HoS was released years after Mission of Honor)

War of Honor (2 mainline books, and 8 years, before Mission of Honor and this Ghost stealth excerpt) was the first mention I can find that specifically used the term "smart paint" -- discussing Bachfisch's armed freighters in Silesia. But it goes on the say:
"The "paint" used by the RMN and most other navies was liberally laced with nanotech and reactive pigments which allowed it to be programmed and altered, essentially without limit, at will. Unfortunately, as McKeon had just suggested, that was of strictly limited utility for a warship."