Of pinnaces, gravity plates and detecting the spider drive.

Belial666 wrote:Gah, my mistake on the book title. Was too excited about potential ramifications when posting.

Dunno about disregarding the danger posed by a well-built spider drive ship though. If it was me, I'd build the spider-SD with a couple hudred torpedo-sized spider-escorts loaded with point defense. Any drones get close enough would get shot by PDLCs or countermissiles that wouldn't even come from the main ship so you couldn't localize it from them. And if the worst happens and the spider-SD has to duke it out with normal SDs, it shuts down its drive, raises bubble sidewall, locks onto the torps with tractors exactly the same way normal-SD locks on to its keyholes, and fights on even footing.
It might lack the wedge's protection and huge acceleration but has an even stronger sidewall, more broadside surface, no wedge interference for sensors and control links, can't be locked onto from further than a couple million clicks at best and lacks the vulnerable unarmored alpha rings of normal SDs.

And that's without any of the tricks the Alignment could have developed that we don't know about.

Not sure how much of the "bubble sidewall" being tactically superior that that I buy, but let's say a Manticoran SD(p) localizes a Lenny Det, which raises it's bubble sidewall (making it bloody obvious where it is). If I'm the captain or higher with the SD division (they don't cruis alone I withdraw beyond range of the LD, as RFC has so far said the MAlign's missiles aren't as good. Plus if it's a bubble sidewall, there's no way for them to control missiles or torps, so far as I can tell. Meanwhile an hour passes, two hours, the Ghost Rider drones have the sucker pegged to a fair-thee-well, the Lenny Det eventually decides to move and...

...either the SD(p)'s drones get a whole lot of sensor readings on HOW to track a spider drive, and then blows the sucker up with Mistletoe or long range MDM fire.

Yes, no?

SharkHunter wrote:

Belial666 wrote:Gah, my mistake on the book title. Was too excited about potential ramifications when posting.

Dunno about disregarding the danger posed by a well-built spider drive ship though. If it was me, I'd build the spider-SD with a couple hudred torpedo-sized spider-escorts loaded with point defense. Any drones get close enough would get shot by PDLCs or countermissiles that wouldn't even come from the main ship so you couldn't localize it from them. And if the worst happens and the spider-SD has to duke it out with normal SDs, it shuts down its drive, raises bubble sidewall, locks onto the torps with tractors exactly the same way normal-SD locks on to its keyholes, and fights on even footing.
It might lack the wedge's protection and huge acceleration but has an even stronger sidewall, more broadside surface, no wedge interference for sensors and control links, can't be locked onto from further than a couple million clicks at best and lacks the vulnerable unarmored alpha rings of normal SDs.

And that's without any of the tricks the Alignment could have developed that we don't know about.

Not sure how much of the "bubble sidewall" being tactically superior that that I buy, but let's say a Manticoran SD(p) localizes a Lenny Det, which raises it's bubble sidewall (making it bloody obvious where it is). If I'm the captain or higher with the SD division (they don't cruis alone I withdraw beyond range of the LD, as RFC has so far said the MAlign's missiles aren't as good. Plus if it's a bubble sidewall, there's no way for them to control missiles or torps, so far as I can tell. Meanwhile an hour passes, two hours, the Ghost Rider drones have the sucker pegged to a fair-thee-well, the Lenny Det eventually decides to move and...

...either the SD(p)'s drones get a whole lot of sensor readings on HOW to track a spider drive, and then blows the sucker up with Mistletoe or long range MDM fire.

Yes, no?

I see what you are saying here, SharkHunter. But it would be a bit premature to draw conclusions. It's a bit like playing five card draw and only seeing one card and not knowing what else the opposition's got up his sleeve. We just don't know enough about the LDs to know how tough they are or what is needed to counter them...

With detecting them, I think Harold is on to something. Detecting the LDs is going to come down to those tractors grabbing the hyper wall. Such sensors might not exist right now, but I bet Sonja & co. can develop them.

Don

1) Forts can fight quite well under bubble sidewalls. Unlike wedges, sidewalls don't block control links and sensors. Thus the spider-SD doesn't need Keyhole: it is by itself a keyhole the size of a capital ship.


2) Unlike with normal ships, you don't have FTL signals and can't estimate a spider-ship's tonnage from them. Are you facing half your tonnage in enemies? Equal tonnage? Twice your tonnage? Suddenly your battle plan is not as easy to make.


3) Mesan missiles aren't nearly as good, true. They got no Apollo, nor as good ECM. They might even be capacitor-fed. But the spider-SD can get within 50 million clicks of you before encountering a full drone shell; you need hundreds of drones at that range, even if you could detect it at a couple million kilometers. And while it was getting close, it was busy firing as many crappy MDMs as it could control on delayed drive activation. Let's call it 2 megatons' worth of MDMs. That's 13.000, roughly what a heavy-cruiser's tonnage of fire control could manage. How much point defense does your SD division have?

SWM wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Still - detectable at low orbit distances, unless and until something that can detect that spider drive operation is developed - may beat trying to detect it through EM reflections, given the smart stealth paint.

I agree about that best chance, mind you. But when you have to cross your fingers for the best chance, you may as well cross your fingers for any others you can count on the remaining fingers too.

Low orbit distances is on the order of hundreds of kilometers, not hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Are you really suggesting trying to get a detector within 0.001 light-seconds in order to detect the grav plates on a spider ship? Good luck with that!

No, I think you'd be simply out of luck that way, barring a miracle or the spider drive ship being in a specific and predictable location in the system. But if it's something to detect at all, then it's something the GA can work on detecting at longer ranges. If the longer ranges get long enough, and you've got enough sensor platforms out there with their own chances to get lucky - possibly recon drone "submunitions", scattering ballistic sensors that just sniff after narrowly defined data with strictly limited sensors and yap if and only if they get a whiff - luck stops taking a miracle. It will have only taken better engineering and a lot of expense.

And again, it's not even a leading hope. It's working out some chance of some long shot playing out in some fashion.

Detection wise, y'all seem to be ignoring a detail, and no, I'm not arguing that a "spider drive ship" would EVER be easy to detect. In fact, I'd think it would be a copper plated witch diffuclty to find one of these ships operating under full stealth. What I am arguing is that the LennyDets etc. are way more vulnerable to detection and destruction under battle conditions, simply based on this textev(s):

Mission Of Honor wrote:Modern stealth fields could do a lot to minimize even heat signatures, but nothing could completely eliminate them, and stealth fields themselves were detectable at extremely short ranges, so any ship remained vulnerable to detection by a sufficiently sensitive sensor on exactly the right (or wrong) bearing.
...
He was less confident that the spider drive would pass unnoticed at such an absurdly short range, however. Chernevsky's people assured him it was exceedingly unlikely—that it had taken them the better part of two T-years to develop their own detectors, even knowing what they were looking for, and that those detectors were still far from anything anyone would ever call reliable—but Sung had no desire to be the one who proved their optimism had been misplaced. Even the Spider had a footprint, after all, even if it wasn't something anyone else would have associated with a drive system. All it would take was for someone to notice an anomalous reading and be conscientious enough—or, for that matter, bored enough—to spend a little time trying to figure out what it was.

And the fact that the Spider's signature flares as it comes up only makes that more likely, he reflected...

Bolding and italics mine. Both of those are "related" by a Mesan captain in charge of his ship. Now then, the RMN sensors and sensor drones are the best in space, and they have mode, method, and motive to be "conscientious enough" to use data collected the Manticoran home system arrays to eventually eliminate every other ship signature, other than those of the Sharks. Once they do that, don't you think EVERY RD in the Manticoran inventory will be updated to watch for the sig?

Their sensors (the Ghost Rider drones) are presently the most sensitive, most reliable, and stealthiest RD's in space, and they deploy them en-masse under battle circumstances. So now you have an un-battle tested, slow, and short-legged warship against the fiercest, fastest, and longest ranging (MDM missile) warships in space, and so far the only ones with FTL control of said missiles.

SharkHunter wrote:Detection wise, y'all seem to be ignoring a detail, and no, I'm not arguing that a "spider drive ship" would EVER be easy to detect. In fact, I'd think it would be a copper plated witch diffuclty to find one of these ships operating under full stealth. What I am arguing is that the LennyDets etc. are way more vulnerable to detection and destruction under battle conditions, simply based on this textev(s):

Mission Of Honor wrote:Modern stealth fields could do a lot to minimize even heat signatures, but nothing could completely eliminate them, and stealth fields themselves were detectable at extremely short ranges, so any ship remained vulnerable to detection by a sufficiently sensitive sensor on exactly the right (or wrong) bearing.
...
He was less confident that the spider drive would pass unnoticed at such an absurdly short range, however. Chernevsky's people assured him it was exceedingly unlikely—that it had taken them the better part of two T-years to develop their own detectors, even knowing what they were looking for, and that those detectors were still far from anything anyone would ever call reliable—but Sung had no desire to be the one who proved their optimism had been misplaced. Even the Spider had a footprint, after all, even if it wasn't something anyone else would have associated with a drive system. All it would take was for someone to notice an anomalous reading and be conscientious enough—or, for that matter, bored enough—to spend a little time trying to figure out what it was.

And the fact that the Spider's signature flares as it comes up only makes that more likely, he reflected...

Bolding and italics mine. Both of those are "related" by a Mesan captain in charge of his ship. Now then, the RMN sensors and sensor drones are the best in space, and they have mode, method, and motive to be "conscientious enough" to use data collected the Manticoran home system arrays to eventually eliminate every other ship signature, other than those of the Sharks. Once they do that, don't you think EVERY RD in the Manticoran inventory will be updated to watch for the sig?

Their sensors (the Ghost Rider drones) are presently the most sensitive, most reliable, and stealthiest RD's in space, and they deploy them en-masse under battle circumstances. So now you have an un-battle tested, slow, and short-legged warship against the fiercest, fastest, and longest ranging (MDM missile) warships in space, and so far the only ones with FTL control of said missiles.

What's fascinating me right now are those spider footprints. Is the issue sensor sensitivity? Or is it a matter of, as I hear you suggesting above, a matter of programing the sensor to detect the right thing? Right now the sensors are programed to detect impeller and hyper drives. But how about disturbances in the hyper wall? And the spider does have to be creating such disturbances. It's conceivable that the spider would be bare naked against a properly programed sensor.

Don

Yeppers. That little bit of 'space arms race" (detection vs. stealth in the spider drive) has us readers chewing on the bulkheads waiting for the next installment in our RFC/MWW "needs-a-heroin-like-fix" to be happy daily routines.

The clues are there... but they're all in the tum-tee-tum-tum hat for now....durn it.

Don't forget that the spider graser torpedoes have the range of a recon drone. So the LDs can fire them from really long range if needed and can also have them loop around to attack from another bearing, so you will have a hard time tracing it back to the LD.

And I believe RFC has hinted that the graser torp isn't the only spider drive equipped weapon. So we don't know enough yet to say that the LDs are not going to be a problem.

Yeah, the Spider-drive is probably detectable eventually, at short enough ranges. It's still going to take drone shells of hundreds of drones to ensure you don't miss them at medium ranges. But "medium ranges" is the point; now Manty missiles have a maximum range not based on their drive time but on the recon drone's sensor reliability instead, which is going to sharply limit their ranges.



As for what weapons I'd put on a spider drive, a couple dozen capital ship warheads mounted on countermissile drives with very short range sprint phases would be my preference. Use the spider-drive to get the launchers close then fire from minimum range, giving the target only 10-15 seconds to respond. In addition, something the size of a large missile pod is going to have sensors and control VI an order of magnitude larger and more powerful than a missile's or even a recon drone's.

Belial666 wrote:As for what weapons I'd put on a spider drive, a couple dozen capital ship warheads mounted on countermissile drives with very short range sprint phases would be my preference. Use the spider-drive to get the launchers close then fire from minimum range, giving the target only 10-15 seconds to respond. In addition, something the size of a large missile pod is going to have sensors and control VI an order of magnitude larger and more powerful than a missile's or even a recon drone's.

It's been noted that a cruiser scale graser masses at least 3000 tons, plus the power supply. Which oddly enough is means it is about what we've estimated a pod full of Mk23s masses. So yeah, I would hardly be shocked by something like this.