SPOILER - How is the GA going to discover Darius or Felix?

kzt wrote:Same way the RMN found bolthole.

Well, the circumstances are different. The Manties weren't running around inside Haven, checking on movements of ships, personnel, and materiel.

"Houdini" was essentially a bust -- the Manties already know the gist of it: that several thousand people evacuated Mesa under cover in the last couple(?) of months, presumably bound for the Malign's new homeworld. There's a finite number of ships that left the system during that period, mostly with predetermined flight plans.

Tracking them down will take time and effort, but showing up in a system with a squadron of warships and (politely) demanding copies of records of ships in and out, and of people who switched ships, and interviews with passengers who are still in-system, should produce a lot of not-guaranteed-to-be-accurate data.

One such case is that slaver base the Torchers occupied. They have probably passed on word that there were oddities in the recent shipping traffic. The locals seemed willing to spill anything they thought would be of interest to the occupying force. (It's probably too much to hope for that more ships will show up and get captured.)

There is apparently a killer wormhole, I bet it leads to felix, just covered up.
If they examine mesa action at torch, the fact they kept attention away from the wormhole, would lead them to believe it leads to somewhere important. so expeditions by miltary forces to make sure.

SYED wrote:There is apparently a killer wormhole, I bet it leads to felix, just covered up.
If they examine mesa action at torch, the fact they kept attention away from the wormhole, would lead them to believe it leads to somewhere important. so expeditions by miltary forces to make sure.

If they figure that the survey ship was lost due to hostile action, they still won't jump the wormhole with warships, or anything at all. An assault against a fortified wormhole is suicide, mines will kill your ship before you recovered from the jump. They would need the coordinates of the destination, and go the long way to assault it.

I can understand some of the logic of sending Houdini ships out via one or more (per ship) slaver bases or transhipment points. If for nothing else, the captains and navigators need a destination and these should be relativly secure locations. It also makes for putting routine destinations into the flight plans. Even slave ships need flight plans of some sort if for nothing else than letting the companies and accountants deal with the numbers and logistics.

On the other hand, why not give the Houdini ship captains sealed orders and have them change destinations once they have hypered out from Mesa to points out in the dark to meet with another ship and transfer the cargo and passengers destined for Darius. This is Mesa, The Alignment and slavers. Most people involved will only know about Mesa and slavers, and I would suspect that such ships almost routinely get orders to make odd stops and detours that are not going to show up in the on-board records. What the ships system logs show as far as time-on-equipment and expending consumables is another matter but not only do you have to get your hands on the ship (with the computer logs intact) but it will be "interesting" to try and figure out where they went in the "extra" time/distance traveled and what they did there.

I would think that the Alignment would want the people they are moving- other than the ones they have planned to kill in the process along with the transports to muddy the trail (really nice and careing are the planners and bosses of the Alignment)- to be just gone once they leave Mesa. So 20+ ships stop at different sets of coordinates and meet other ships (which they can't identify) and transfer mostly people and then the initial ships go on about their regular, if often criminal, business?

It is possible that the Alignment fully intends to just destroy the Houdini ships with their crews (and other passengers and slaves and cargo) once they shift the Houdini personal to last stage transport to Darius but why? Most, probably all, of the crews and officers have a lot of motivation not to be caught by someone like the Manties and most would appear to just be normal transport freighters and are used to doing odd things for off-book jobs and avoiding attention.

SYED wrote:There is apparently a killer wormhole, I bet it leads to felix, just covered up.
If they examine mesa action at torch, the fact they kept attention away from the wormhole, would lead them to believe it leads to somewhere important. so expeditions by miltary forces to make sure.

That's two different issues. The Felix junction was discovered during a survey of the Felix system by a Jessyk Combine ship looking to see if it could serve as the MAlign's arsenal because it was close to Mannerheim. The four termini, Darius, The Twins, ? and ?, were mapped from the junction out, and then the path to Congo was mapped from The Twins. We have no reason to believe Felix has a fifth terminus.

Trying to investigate the Torch wormhole further is a non-starter. They've already lost one ship; the topic has been done to death in several threads.

Whitecold wrote:

SYED wrote:There is apparently a killer wormhole, I bet it leads to felix, just covered up.
If they examine mesa action at torch, the fact they kept attention away from the wormhole, would lead them to believe it leads to somewhere important. so expeditions by miltary forces to make sure.

If they figure that the survey ship was lost due to hostile action, they still won't jump the wormhole with warships, or anything at all. An assault against a fortified wormhole is suicide, mines will kill your ship before you recovered from the jump. They would need the coordinates of the destination, and go the long way to assault it.

It depends on how heavily wormhole is fortified. With Manticorian junction you are correct. With Torch Harvest Joy got taken out by BCs. A squadron of Nikes mass transited would make mincemeat of the bad guys on the other end. But of course, the Manties don't know that...

Don

Brigade XO wrote:I can understand some of the logic of sending Houdini ships out via one or more (per ship) slaver bases or transhipment points. If for nothing else, the captains and navigators need a destination and these should be relativly secure locations. It also makes for putting routine destinations into the flight plans. Even slave ships need flight plans of some sort if for nothing else than letting the companies and accountants deal with the numbers and logistics.

On the other hand, why not give the Houdini ship captains sealed orders and have them change destinations once they have hypered out from Mesa to points out in the dark to meet with another ship and transfer the cargo and passengers destined for Darius. This is Mesa, The Alignment and slavers. Most people involved will only know about Mesa and slavers, and I would suspect that such ships almost routinely get orders to make odd stops and detours that are not going to show up in the on-board records. What the ships system logs show as far as time-on-equipment and expending consumables is another matter but not only do you have to get your hands on the ship (with the computer logs intact) but it will be "interesting" to try and figure out where they went in the "extra" time/distance traveled and what they did there.

It's a nice idea, but I think that would take more coordination than they can manage. Besides, Manpower bases have facilities where passengers can wait for the next ship.

Brigade XO wrote:I would think that the Alignment would want the people they are moving- other than the ones they have planned to kill in the process along with the transports to muddy the trail (really nice and careing are the planners and bosses of the Alignment)- to be just gone once they leave Mesa. So 20+ ships stop at different sets of coordinates and meet other ships (which they can't identify) and transfer mostly people and then the initial ships go on about their regular, if often criminal, business?

It is possible that the Alignment fully intends to just destroy the Houdini ships with their crews (and other passengers and slaves and cargo) once they shift the Houdini personal to last stage transport to Darius but why? Most, probably all, of the crews and officers have a lot of motivation not to be caught by someone like the Manties and most would appear to just be normal transport freighters and are used to doing odd things for off-book jobs and avoiding attention.

I suspect the ships making the last leg of the trip to Darius only go between Darius and a small number of Manpower bases. Some of those bases can't be destroyed; they're the critical interface between Darius and everything else.

As for the rest, they were expecting Mesa to crash and burn once they left, taking Manpower with it. They're done with Manpower. They want the stench of genetic slavery to die down so they can get on with their uplift programs. Having Manpower around any longer is an embarrassment.

SYED wrote:There is apparently a killer wormhole, I bet it leads to felix, just covered up.
If they examine mesa action at torch, the fact they kept attention away from the wormhole, would lead them to believe it leads to somewhere important. so expeditions by miltary forces to make sure.

Whitecold wrote:If they figure that the survey ship was lost due to hostile action, they still won't jump the wormhole with warships, or anything at all. An assault against a fortified wormhole is suicide, mines will kill your ship before you recovered from the jump. They would need the coordinates of the destination, and go the long way to assault it.

n7axw wrote:It depends on how heavily wormhole is fortified. With Manticorian junction you are correct. With Torch Harvest Joy got taken out by BCs. A squadron of Nikes mass transited would make mincemeat of the bad guys on the other end. But of course, the Manties don't know that...

Don

During the discussion about investigating the Torch wormhole, RFC suggested that the MAlign might fortify it. Whether they've done it or not? No idea. However, there are several gigantic threads on the subject. It's a non-starter.

n7axw wrote:

Whitecold wrote:If they figure that the survey ship was lost due to hostile action, they still won't jump the wormhole with warships, or anything at all. An assault against a fortified wormhole is suicide, mines will kill your ship before you recovered from the jump. They would need the coordinates of the destination, and go the long way to assault it.

It depends on how heavily wormhole is fortified. With Manticorian junction you are correct. With Torch Harvest Joy got taken out by BCs. A squadron of Nikes mass transited would make mincemeat of the bad guys on the other end. But of course, the Manties don't know that...

Don

If the defending BCs were compitent the Nikes would have a very bad day; although some might survive long enough to start fighting back.

The problem, as RFC has explained it to us, is that in the transit lane near a wormhole there's a stretch where the wormhole's gravity impinges strongly enough on normal space that you have to use sails. (See HMS Fearless transiting out to Basilisk back in OBS)

So until you clear that zone it's like you're stuck in a grav wave; no missiles, no sidewalls. But the defenders are outside the zone and the zone isn't as wide as a laserhead's standoff range.


So they can either
1) hang back in missile range and lob in laserheads (which you can only defend against with PDLCs because you can't use CMs in a grav wave or wormhole terminus lane) -or-
2) move in to the range where energy weapons are effective against targets lacking sidewalls, but ineffective against sidewalls. The attacker's return fire splashes off the defender's sidewalls, but the defenders fire smashes the armor of the attacker.


Even something as big and tough as a Nike is going to get badly mangled when exposed to a minute or so of fire it can't respond to, roll wedge against, or even impose sidewalls to blunt.



Wormhole assault really only 'work' if you can throw enough simultaneous targets that the defenders physically can't destroy the majority of them before the survivors finish transiting the entry lane zone and can raise wedges & sidewalls.

n7axw wrote:It depends on how heavily wormhole is fortified. With Manticorian junction you are correct. With Torch Harvest Joy got taken out by BCs. A squadron of Nikes mass transited would make mincemeat of the bad guys on the other end. But of course, the Manties don't know that...

No, they would get shot to pieces by 200+ grasers while having no sidewalls. Note that the sensors of the Harvest Joy were just beginning to resolve the situation when it blowed up. This, plus no sidewalls, really limits your ability to be anything other then a target. This assumes the MAN didn't also drop a few thousand mines.