Are missile pods obsolete?

wastedfly wrote:

Kizarvexis wrote:
Would you point me to said thread please?

Don't worry. You were right. Kzt did his too hasty skim thing with a one sentence post afterwards. I call em kztisms. ENT's call it being hasty.

I snipped out the rest. Here is the original post. I would like to see the original thread kzt is referring to please, to see if my reading on the Adm Tourville attack are the same as what RFC posted.

kzt wrote:

Kizarvexis wrote:So no, Adm Tourville did not attack from outside the hyper limit. Missile wedges have always been set it and forget it. Now, with MDMs, you can set one drive at full accel and another drive at half accel, but you can not change the wedge strength once started on a particular drive.

You obviously have missed the thread where David explained this in great detail. This was in response to my arguing that you would have to be a complete idiot to get ambushed in this way, given that the hyper limit is typically 10 to 20 light minutes from the planet and there really is no reason to do anything that gets you out close to the hyper limit, much less being critically low on ammo. For example, look at the exchange be ratio at BoM, even out numbered horrifically RMN missiles are so much better then RHN missiles that Home Fleet killed 1/2 of the attackers, so obviously the Zanzibar defenders would have had to shoot themselves pretty much dry.

But no, David came back with the answer that the RMN came out to fight near the Hyperlimit due to the RHN methodically obliterating the orbital industry and infrastructure of Zanzibar from outside the effective range of RMN missiles and the RMN hence had to run out to the hyperlimit in order to drive them off.

Think about what that implies for a minute: this means the RHN is so damn confident of their missiles that they are willing to target orbital infrastructure around an occupied using significant ballistic segments (otherwise the RMN would have been able to effective shoot back - right?) for the purpose of achieving a minor tactical advantage. So they must therefore consider that the chance of an edict violation when shooting at the orbital infrastructure around an occupied planet for greater than 60 million km is so small as to not count. Remember that if you kill the industry around the 3 occupied planets in Manticore then Haven doesn't achieve some minor tactical advantage, they WIN THE WAR.

Oh, and the RHN used the donkeys to reload fast and deliver huge, massive salvos, which nobody noticed or felt was worth reporting to Intel.

wastedfly wrote:

Kizarvexis wrote:
Would you point me to said thread please?

Don't worry. You were right. Kzt did his too hasty skim thing with a one sentence post afterwards. I call em kztisms. ENT's call it being hasty.

It typically comes from posting on my phone between sets at the gym.

The thread on Zanzibar mentioned above.

viewtopic.php?p=67037#p67037

Please post comments here rather then in that dead thread.

kzt wrote:You obviously have missed the thread where David explained this in great detail. This was in response to my arguing that you would have to be a complete idiot to get ambushed in this way, given that the hyper limit is typically 10 to 20 light minutes from the planet and there really is no reason to do anything that gets you out close to the hyper limit, much less being critically low on ammo. For example, look at the exchange be ratio at BoM, even out numbered horrifically RMN missiles are so much better then RHN missiles that Home Fleet killed 1/2 of the attackers, so obviously the Zanzibar defenders would have had to shoot themselves pretty much dry.

But no, David came back with the answer that the RMN came out to fight near the Hyperlimit due to the RHN methodically obliterating the orbital industry and infrastructure of Zanzibar from outside the effective range of RMN missiles and the RMN hence had to run out to the hyperlimit in order to drive them off.

Think about what that implies for a minute: this means the RHN is so damn confident of their missiles that they are willing to target orbital infrastructure around an occupied using significant ballistic segments (otherwise the RMN would have been able to effective shoot back - right?) for the purpose of achieving a minor tactical advantage. So they must therefore consider that the chance of an edict violation when shooting at the orbital infrastructure around an occupied planet for greater than 60 million km is so small as to not count. Remember that if you kill the industry around the 3 occupied planets in Manticore then Haven doesn't achieve some minor tactical advantage, they WIN THE WAR.

Oh, and the RHN used the donkeys to reload fast and deliver huge, massive salvos, which nobody noticed or felt was worth reporting to Intel.

I went back and read the thread you cited, reread the probe attack by Adm Diamato and the recap of the attack by Adm Tourville on Zanzibar in "At All Costs". No where can I find that the RHN was attacking the infrastructure around the planet from long range. Adm al-Bakr had spoken with Adm Padgorny about protecting the intersystem infrastructure and the LAC probe attack wasn't going near the planet (text-ev). So not all of the infrastructure is around the planet. From the earliest books, single drive missiles have been able to attack fixed installations from outside of drive range as the fixed installation doesn't move. Considering how worried the Zanzibar Navy was about the probing attack by LACs, when SD(p)s show up and start lobbing missiles at the fixed installations, I can certainly see them ordering the defenders out to chase off the attackers, even to the hyper limit. Especially, if they were getting their licks in. I had not considered the decel and re-accel time of the RMN defending fleet, but that makes sense as to why it took them so long to get back into the system. Especially as Adm Tourville's force would have the alpha translation to slow them down.

As for the Donkey's, we have seen other battles where when the fleet was trashed, they necessarily did not have the full info to bring back on exactly 'how' they were trashed, as in the first use of LACs at Hancock. I skimmed through the Battle of Manticore at the end of "At All Costs" again and did not see anything about this being the first time Donkey's had been used. It is the first time the reader is exposed to them and with RFC having characters have bad info in the past, I don't see a problem here. Especially, as this ratchets up the tension for the reader which is part and parcel of telling a story. So I have to disagree with y'alls interpretation of the attacks in "At All Costs".

MDMs are stated as "notoriously inaccurate". Show me ONE example of someone attacking planetary orbital infrastructure from 10 light minutes away or more.

Just one.

You won't find it, because it has been stated multiple times that this risks hitting the planet. Which is a huge problem for the side that did it. Note how they didn't take that chance in Manticore, where they would have won the damn war if they had taken out the orbital infrastructure, and they were a LOT closer than 10 LM to Spinx.

From my immediately preceding post.

Kizarvexis wrote:
No where can I find that the RHN was attacking the infrastructure around the planet from long range. Adm al-Bakr had spoken with Adm Padgorny about protecting the intersystem infrastructure and the LAC probe attack wasn't going near the planet (text-ev). So not all of the infrastructure is around the planet. From the earliest books, single drive missiles have been able to attack fixed installations from outside of drive range as the fixed installation doesn't move.

Kizarvexis wrote:From my immediately preceding post.

Kizarvexis wrote:
No where can I find that the RHN was attacking the infrastructure around the planet from long range. Adm al-Bakr had spoken with Adm Padgorny about protecting the intersystem infrastructure and the LAC probe attack wasn't going near the planet (text-ev). So not all of the infrastructure is around the planet. From the earliest books, single drive missiles have been able to attack fixed installations from outside of drive range as the fixed installation doesn't move.

SDMs have also never been used to attack things near occupied planets. It tends to cause really bad PR, starting with the SL declaring war on you.

And no, if the target wasn't around the planet, there really isn't anything you can do about using the fleet, as it is so far away from the planet (where the fleet is) that you can't get even get close before it gets turned into very hot dust. That is, btw, one of the reasons why people usually put important orbital industries close to their planet.

And if you do chase off after them, you expose the planet. Which most people in the system, who live on that planet, consider more important than some industrial platform 25 light minutes away on the other side of the sun.

Let us break this up into pieces. And please read ALL of the post.

kzt wrote:SDMs have also never been used to attack things near occupied planets. It tends to cause really bad PR, starting with the SL declaring war on you.

Did you happen to miss this sentence?

Kizarvexis wrote:No where can I find that the RHN was attacking the infrastructure around the planet from long range.

Before continuing on, please get 'attacking the near orbitals' out of your head. "At All Costs" textev is that "most of the system's manufacturing and commercial infrastructure (rebuilt with the very latest technology and the aid of massive Manticoran loans and subsidies after Icarus) orbited the planet." Two things, the word 'most' does not equal the word 'all' and I wonder if by 'orbited the planet', RFC was including Lagrange points as a simplifier as he only has so much infodump(tm) he can put in a book and not lose the readers.

kzt wrote:And no, if the target wasn't around the planet, there really isn't anything you can do about using the fleet, as it is so far away from the planet (where the fleet is) that you can't get even get close before it gets turned into very hot dust. That is, btw, one of the reasons why people usually put important orbital industries close to their planet.

And if you do chase off after them, you expose the planet. Which most people in the system, who live on that planet, consider more important than some industrial platform 25 light minutes away on the other side of the sun.

Why would the other industrial platforms be 25 light minutes away? That would be the other side of the system from the planet. There are much closer locations than that for putting infrastructure.

Try to keep up with me here. Here is a youtube video showing L1-L5 points of the Earth and Moon orbiting around the Sun. L1 of the Earth/Moon is about a light second (300,000km) from Earth. L2 is a little less than 1.5 lightseconds (438,000km) from Earth. L3 is about 1.25 light seconds (375,000km) from Earth. L4 and L5 are a over 1.25 lightseconds (380,000km) from Earth in front and behind the Moon in the Moon's orbit. All of the Lagrange points can have infrastructure orbit there with little to no fuel use. If Zanzibar has a moon, then it will have Lagrange points. Depending on the size of Zanzibar and the size of it's moon, the distances above WILL be different. Since we don't know the size of Zanzibar, then the exact range of ANY Lagrange points is only conjecture, but the fact Zanzibar WILL have Lagrange points is not.

Zanzibar is just under 8 light minutes from it's star and Earth is 8.3 light minutes from the Sun, so lets say that the Earth, Moon, Zanzibar and Zanzibar's moon are the same size since I have the distances above. (Zanzibar doesn't have a moon you say, just wait I say.) I'm sure humans in the 41st century understand NIMBY (No In My Back Yard), I would expect the more dangerous/resource intensive installations would be at Lagrange points. Even the largest fleet (300 wallers) only takes up a half a light second in a STRAIGHT line. We know that fleets are at the minimum a plane, height and width, so a fleet takes up a small part of the volume of a light second and that is what is targetted with missiles. Now a missile at even half the speed of light is only a few seconds from the planet at the distances above, so I can give you the expectation that anything within the distances of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points are probably off limits from attack due to worries about EE violations.

If Zanzibar doesn't have a moon, no problem as there are Lagrange points for the Earth and Sun and those distances are greater. (If Zanzibar does have a moon, then it gets all the Lagrange points I mention.) L1 and L2 are about 5 light seconds from Earth and L4 and L5 are 8.3 light minutes in front and behind of the Earth's orbit. L3 is where you like to put stuff, the opposite side of the Sun from Earth at 18.6 light minutes. I'm betting that 5 light seconds is probably far enough from the planet to consider attacking it. 8.3 light minutes for L4 and L5 are certainly far enough from the planet and L4 and L5 are the largest and most stable of the Lagrange points. Also, the L4 and L5 points are the same distance inside the hyperlimit as Zanzibar and are something a fleet would have to defend. BTW, the L4 and L5 points are at the same distance in front and behind a planet's orbit as the planet is from the star. So Zanzibar's L4 and L5 points are DEFINITELY less than 8 light minutes from Zanzibar.

Mercury, Venus, Mars and the rest all have their own Lagrange points as well. I'm sure hitting Venus with a missile that missed the infrastructure in orbit would get barely a yawn out of the SL. The Sun's (G2) hyperlimit is 21.12 light minutes which is roughly 380 million kms. That means that Mars is 8.5 light minutes inside the Sun's hyperlimit. I would expect the Zanzibar system to have other planets as well. If there are resources to be extracted from those planets, then you would have installations there to extract them. For Earth and Mars, depending on where each are in their orbits, they are 4.2 to 20.9 light minutes apart. Venus and Earth are 2.3 to 8.8 light minutes apart. So, depending on the system layout of Zanzibar, there could be lots of other places for the rest of the infrastruce that isn't around Zanzibar.

Basically, this boils down to 'most' is not 'all' and the other infrastrucure can be far enough away to not worry about EE violations, but close enough for a fleet to defend.

One Light Second is roughly 300,000km. One Light Minute is roughly 18 million kms.

To Kizarvexis

The L4 and L5 Lagrange points of the Earth-Moon system are not quite fully stable. When the Sun is included in the calculations, it takes very little disturbance for an object at the L4 or L5 Lagrange points to begin moving away from it. This makes sense since the Lagrange points can be thought of as 'higher' in terms of how much energy is required to reach them, with the nearby space being 'lower'.

With the Sun in the calculations, instead of an object being right at the L4 or L5 point, it is more stable to have the object in an orbit around the Earth so that from the point of view of an observer at the Lagrange point, the object would appear to be orbiting the point.

An even better orbit would be a 2:1 resonance orbit around the Earth, with an apogee is ~200,000 miles and a perigee of ~100,000 miles. This orbit is completely stable, with an orbital period of slightly less than 2 weeks.

Note that this orbit is definitely both inner-system and inside the Honorverse's hyper limit.

Source: Colonies In Space by T. A. Heppenheimer, copyright 1977 ISBN 0-446-81-581-0, pages 143-147 (with accompanying diagrams), paperback edition.

A copy that can read online for free (copyright 1977, 2007): Colonies in Space
The information in the post above is in: Chapter 8: The Highest Home
The parent page, with useful information and links: Space Settlement
The parent site, with even more useful information and links: National Space Society

I highly recommend both the book and the site, which also has other books about space colonization that can be read online for free.

Vince wrote:To Kizarvexis

The L4 and L5 Lagrange points of the Earth-Moon system are not quite fully stable. When the Sun is included in the calculations, it takes very little disturbance for an object at the L4 or L5 Lagrange points to begin moving away from it. This makes sense since the Lagrange points can be thought of as 'higher' in terms of how much energy is required to reach them, with the nearby space being 'lower'.

How closely would you orbit the Lagrange point? I know that depending on the point you are at, it can take little to no fuel to stay there. So, the no fuel option would be orbiting the point?

Vince wrote:
With the Sun in the calculations, instead of an object being right at the L4 or L5 point, it is more stable to have the object in an orbit around the Earth so that from the point of view of an observer at the Lagrange point, the object would appear to be orbiting the point.

An even better orbit would be a 2:1 resonance orbit around the Earth, with an apogee is ~200,000 miles and a perigee of ~100,000 miles. This orbit is completely stable, with an orbital period of slightly less than 2 weeks.

Note that this orbit is definitely both inner-system and inside the Honorverse's hyper limit.
{snip}

~200,000 miles is still around a light second, so I would think that would be too close for a long range launch (more than a light minute).