Hyper bands and sub-bands

There are quite a few references to the "lower delta bands" or "upper theta bands" as though a band had a series of sub-bands. But I don't recall any textev of what those differences are like, and haven't been able to find anything in these forums to clarify. (But that could be just me, or the search tool.) Tables like http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/95/1 suggest that hyper bands are homogeneous. So ...

Do hyper bands have sub-bands? If so, what differentiates them? How is transition managed among them? Do they have mini "walls" like the major bands?

On a related note, do upward translations produce gravitic signatures in the destination band? Are downward transitions as invisible in the origin band as upward transitions are? Is the effect symmetrical in both directions, and repeating across bands, or the N/Alpha wall somehow special?

Unfortunately, we don't know anything more than you do (unless BuNine or Duckk have some info). It does appear that there are sub-bands, but there is little or no evidence that effective velocity (for instance) varies across sub-bands of a band. Nor is it clear whether you can detect ships in neighboring sub-bands.

The sub-band questions are all left very vague by David.

Dca wrote:On a related note, do upward translations produce gravitic signatures in the destination band? Are downward transitions as invisible in the origin band as upward transitions are? Is the effect symmetrical in both directions, and repeating across bands, or the N/Alpha wall somehow special?

David answered this one, you see a signature on the side that you emerge on. So if you go into hyper from real-space there is no signature per se in real-space (you are just suddenly not there any longer - though if you are under impeller drive there is a noticeable effect), but on the alpha side there is a signature proportional to your velocity and mass. It implies the same is true going from the Alpha side to real-space.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... gton/265/0

kzt wrote:The sub-band questions are all left very vague by David.

Dca wrote:On a related note, do upward translations produce gravitic signatures in the destination band? Are downward transitions as invisible in the origin band as upward transitions are? Is the effect symmetrical in both directions, and repeating across bands, or the N/Alpha wall somehow special?

David answered this one, you see a signature on the side that you emerge on. So if you go into hyper from real-space there is no signature per se in real-space (you are just suddenly not there any longer - though if you are under impeller drive there is a noticeable effect), but on the alpha side there is a signature proportional to your velocity and mass. It implies the same is true going from the Alpha side to real-space.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... gton/265/0

And similarly for transiting between bands.

But no information about transit signals between sub-bands.

I didn't want to treat "sub-bands" as an artistic flourish, but that seems about as plausible as anything my imagination fills in. Doesn't seem like his style, though.

If so much is invested in system wide gravitic arrays in n-space, why aren't there any sitting in the lower hyper bands? Ripple propagation / detection is "somewhat lower" in hyper, but I'd still think it would be worth doing. Not only to make it harder to sneak into a system coming down from higher bands, but to tell when someone is sneaking away, coming up from n-space.

Dca wrote:I didn't want to treat "sub-bands" as an artistic flourish, but that seems about as plausible as anything my imagination fills in. Doesn't seem like his style, though.

If so much is invested in system wide gravitic arrays in n-space, why aren't there any sitting in the lower hyper bands? Ripple propagation / detection is "somewhat lower" in hyper, but I'd still think it would be worth doing. Not only to make it harder to sneak into a system coming down from higher bands, but to tell when someone is sneaking away, coming up from n-space.

There is the problem of getting that information to someone in time for it to do some good. There is no way for direct information transfer across a hyper wall. It requires a physical messenger. With a minimum of a six minute time lag for a hyper-generator to come up from stand-by, any information you could send would be irrelevant because the incoming ship would already be in normal space with it's own signature and out-bound would be long gone.

Also translations from the upper bands to real space can be fast, so called crash translations if I remember correctly. So monitoring hyperspace makes only sense if you monitor all the bands, because else someone sneaks by in a higher band and breaks through before you have time to react.

Dca wrote:There are quite a few references to the "lower delta bands" or "upper theta bands" as though a band had a series of sub-bands. But I don't recall any textev of what those differences are like, and haven't been able to find anything in these forums to clarify. (But that could be just me, or the search tool.) Tables like http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/95/1 suggest that hyper bands are homogeneous. So ...

Do hyper bands have sub-bands? If so, what differentiates them? How is transition managed among them? Do they have mini "walls" like the major bands?

The repeated references suggest that they are indeed separate from one another. Let me point out one particular passage:

Shadow of Saganami, Ch. 4 wrote:"Helm," Helen said, "come to one-one-niner by zero-four-six at five hundred and eighty gravities, translation gradient of eight-point-six-two to h-band Zeta-one-seven. I'm uploading the waypoints now."

The existence of hyper band "Zeta 17" means one of two things:

1) The Zeta bands number at least seventeen.
2) The Alpha through Zeta bands collectively number at least seventeen.

I doubt the latter case is true, but for the sake of argument let's assume it is. The bands may be laid out like so:
Alpha 1
Beta 2-3
Gamma 4-6
Delta 7-10
Epsilon 11-15
Zeta 16-21

(Many arrangements for this interpretation are possible, but this is one that bears a relationship to math that turns up in nature.)

Each band is discrete (Ships in Beta 2 can't see those in Beta 3 or vice versa), but since they have (essentially) the same "inflation factor", they have a 1:1 correspondence moving from (sub-)band to band. The transition from Alpha to Beta, etc. "crosses a wall" because of the change of that "inflation factor". Moving from one sub-band to another within the same lettered group of bands would not produce velocity bleed-off because it doesn't cross a wall. And the hyper footprint of downward translations might only be observable from the highest sub-band(s) within a group.

Hexapuma would have the same apparent velocity in Zeta 17 as in any lower Zeta bands (1-16 for option 1, potentially just 16 for option 2, unless my table is off and Zeta 17 is the lowest Zeta band), so the reason for reaching a higher sub-band may have to do with known grav waves in Z17 being more favorable for the journey from the Lynx Terminus to Spindle. Perhaps Z16 had a grav wave going the wrong way. Or it might be SOP for ships that aren't riding a particular grav wave to run in the second-to-the-bottom sub-band of a letter group, so as to have two different directions to take evasive action along the hyper vector without crossing a wall.

Anyway, that's the only sensible interpretation I can come up with, at least until DW clears it up (like he did with the "12-hour limit" and "12-minute limit").

TheMonster wrote:Each band is discrete (Ships in Beta 2 can't see those in Beta 3 or vice versa), but since they have (essentially) the same "inflation factor", they have a 1:1 correspondence moving from (sub-)band to band. The transition from Alpha to Beta, etc. "crosses a wall" because of the change of that "inflation factor". Moving from one sub-band to another within the same lettered group of bands would not produce velocity bleed-off because it doesn't cross a wall. And the hyper footprint of downward translations might only be observable from the highest sub-band(s) within a group.

It makes sense that the various subbsnd to have very nearly the same "inflation factor", but based off what Alice Truman pulled in HotQ racing back from Grayson I assume they aren't identical. If they were she wouldn't have "bounced off the Iota wall".

I assume after taking out the safety interlocks she took to very fastest sub band in the Theta bands (however minor a benefit that was)


Also on a slightly different track, there's an info dump that says that DDs are useful for scouting adjacent sub bands while escorting a convoy.

Jonathan_S wrote:Also on a slightly different track, there's an info dump that says that DDs are useful for scouting adjacent sub bands while escorting a convoy.

Yes, that tends to confirm the general theory that it's relatively easy to slip between "sub-bands" without crossing a "wall", and that doing so is necessary to be able to see what's in those sub-bands.

It's one of the few remaining "screening" jobs DDs can do better than the crew-equivalent number of LACs.