THE LENNYS ARE COMING! THE LENNYS ARE COMING!

jdtinIA wrote:We know that a wedge cannot come into contact with another wedge or physical structure without things going all explody.
Does the spider drive have the same effect?
What happens to a ship or space station or whatever if one of the spider legs comes into contact? What happens to a wedge if it and a spider leg intersect?

cthia wrote:Something seems to be derailing my train of thought. Or either the illogic in my head is finally catching up with me.

Surely it can't be as simple as that Maxx, or it would prove to have been lots of work on a useless one-off design. Similar to the grav lance.

Snipping...

MaxxQ wrote:

cthia wrote:Something seems to be derailing my train of thought. Or either the illogic in my head is finally catching up with me.

Surely it can't be as simple as that Maxx, or it would prove to have been lots of work on a useless one-off design. Similar to the grav lance.

Snipping...

You're forgetting the mindset of the Malign. It's based entirely on secrecy, sneakiness, and remaining in the shadows and hidden. Their entire ethos for the past few hundred years has been that of no one knowing they were around. Keeping that sort of mindset over centuries tends to make all decisions based on that. The Malign knows that they can't fight one-on-one in a stand-up fight against anyone in the GA, collectively or singly, so they opt for being undetectable.

All the information we currently have (and I mean "we" as in including myself - I have no idea what David has in mind for the Lennys) indicates that they cannot fight an open battle with any other ship. David MAY have some new superweapon for them, but there's been no hint of it at all anywhere, and currently available textev clearly indicates that there's absolutely no way a Detweiler could stand up to even a heavy cruiser armed with DDMs or MDMs in pods.

A sidewall offers SOME protection, by bending incoming attacks away - conversely, an incoming laserhead beam might have missed, but the sidewall could very easily bend it enough for a hit - but with no wedge to interpose, reducing significantly any incoming fire, they're practically sitting ducks. Their accel is no match for even the Sollies, let alone the GA. I suppose the additional mass could be double or triple thick armor, which would certainly help, but if a ship can fire thousands of missile at their leisure while the Dets are crawling along at 150 g's, it ain't going to last long.

So, yes... their stealthiness IS their only advantage, as far as we currently know. The only real tactic I can forsee is having a couple as support for an attacking RF fleet. While the defenders are distracted by what they CAN see (the RF fleet), the Dets will sneak around trying to get flank shots, probably after putting their Cataphracts on a delayed wedge start, so they can get out of the area they were launched from, preventing backtracking the missiles to their launcher.

Chapter 43 Mission of Honor wrote:"I wish we'd taken out more of their wall, too, Father," he said finally. "On the other hand, the point about their missile supply is extremely well taken. Especially if we can get them to use up most of the ones they've got on the Sollies."

"I know."

Albrecht sipped more wine, then looked down into his glass.

"I know," he repeated, "but I've been thinking. I know they got away from us in the yards, but we know where they are, and—"

"No, Father."

The two words came out very firmly, and Albrecht looked up to see Benjamin sitting back from the table and folding his arms across his chest. For a moment, there was something almost comical about the father's wheedling expression and the stern light in the son's eyes.

"I know what you're about to say, Father," Benjamin continued. "In fact, Dan and Collin and I figured it might occur to you as soon as we realized we hadn't caught as many ships in the yards as we'd hoped."

"So the three of you sat down and discussed it behind my back, is that it?" Albrecht's voice could have been ominous, but instead, it was almost quizzical, and Benjamin shrugged.

"You're the one who put me in charge of the Navy, Daniel in charge of research, and Collin in charge of intel, Father. I don't think you did it because you expected us to sit on our brains."

"No, you're right about that," Albrecht acknowledged.

"Well, since we were using them as something besides cushions, it occurred to us to think the same thing you're thinking. If Topolev and Colenso could get into Manticore and Yeltsin's Star undetected, why not do the same thing to Trevor's Star? Pick off the warships we didn't get first time around?"

"That is what I was thinking," Albrecht said. "From your response, I'm assuming the three of you decided it wasn't such a great idea after all?"

"Oh, the idea's just fine, Father. The problem is how likely it is that we wouldn't get away with it. Let's face it, Oyster Bay was in many ways a one-off operation. It succeeded because the Manties didn't have a clue about our capabilities. Well, now they do—have a clue, I mean. They still don't know how we did it, but they damned well know we did do it, and if nothing else, they're going to be pouncing on every 'ghost footprint' their hyper sensors pick up with everything they've got. And, frankly, the fact that we haven't been able to come up with an effective detector for the spider drive doesn't fill me with unbounded confidence that the Manties might not have something we don't even know about that could do the job. I think it's unlikely, but I'm not prepared to assume it's impossible.

"So looking at it from the perspective of getting in in the first place, things would be a lot more iffy a second time around—especially a second time around that came close on the heels of Oyster Bay."

Benjamin looked across the table at his father until Albrecht nodded to show he was following so far.

"Secondly," Benjamin continued then, "the force levels we'd require would actually be higher. Oyster Bay succeeded because we could plan on achieving total surprise and our targets were civilian installations. They weren't armored, they didn't have any active or passive defenses in operation, and they couldn't dodge. After what happened to their home system, I can guarantee you no one as experienced as the Manties is going to let us catch their battle fleet under circumstances like that. At the very minimum, their impellers are going to be permanently hot. Most likely, they'll have minimum station-keeping wedges up, for that matter, and they're going to have their damned FTL recon platforms deployed widely enough to give them plenty of time to get wedges and sidewalls fully up before anything gets close enough to attack. So we'd need a hell of a lot more firepower to achieve decisive results, and, unfortunately, the 'i]Sharks[/i] are too small—and we don't have enough of them—to provide that level of combat power. Worse, in a lot of ways, they're too fragile to survive the kind of damage Manty laserheads can hand out.

"And that brings me to the third point, which is—and, frankly, Father, I think this is probably the most important consideration—that we literally cannot afford to lose the Sharks. More specifically, we can't afford to lose their crews. The people aboard those ships right now are the seed corn for the crews of the ships we're building here in Darius. We've just blown an enormous hole in the Manties' trained manpower, one that's going to be a huge factor in how long it takes them to recover from Oyster Bay. Given the way things are proceeding, and given our own operational and strategic planning, we can't afford to have the same thing happen to us. We're going to be in the position of having to enormously expand our naval personnel no matter what happens, and we don't have the institutional base the Manties do. We need every single one of the men and women who carried out Oyster Bay. We need their skills and their experience, and we need them here—alive—not vaporized at Trevor's Star."

"Do you really think that would be a likely outcome?" Albrecht asked after several seconds. His tone was curious, not confrontational, and Benjamin shrugged again.

"Frankly? No. I don't think the attack would be anywhere near as successful as Oyster Bay was, and I think giving the Manties another look—or the chance for another look, anyway—at our new hardware would be risky, but I don't really think they'd be likely to detect, track, and kill the Sharks wholesale. Unfortunately, 'don't think they'd be likely to' isn't a very good basis for operational planning. One thing you taught all of us a long time ago was that we can't make the universe be what we want it to be, so we'd better figure out what it really is and factor that into our planning. And in this case, the potential return, even assuming everything went near perfectly, doesn't begin to compare to the potential damage we'll take if everything doesn't go near perfectly."

Albrecht sat in evident thought for a few moments, then finished the wine in his glass and set it back down on the table.

"You're right. I didn't put any of you boys where you are just so you could watch me make mistakes. And I hadn't really thought about all the implications you've just pointed out. I still wish we could do it, but you're right. The last thing we need to do is to start making the kind of 'we're invincible' mistakes those jackasses in the League are making. As Isabel would have said, this isn't the time for us to be flying by the seat of our pants if we don't have to."

cthia wrote:Albrecht was considering going into Trevor's Star and essentially mopping up the ships that got away. Those ships are now under power. He obviously feels he has the capability to destroy them still. His son seems to agree on that point. His son's objection, or reservation, seems to be centered around whether the Manties could detect them now. And the fact that the fleet isn't ready (need more time as Haven once did) and they have surmised that they'd need substantially more fire power than what's currently available should they be forced out into the open and into confrontation. It just doesn't sound exactly like the wheasing of a particularly timid navy.

Mission of Honor Chapter 43 wrote:The "private yacht" was about the size of most navies' battlecruisers, and almost as heavily armed. Which didn't prevent it from being one of the most luxuriously appointed vessels in the galaxy . . . as well as one of the fastest. It had made the passage from the Mesa System forty percent more rapidly than anyone else's ship could have managed it.

Albrecht Detweiler reflected on exactly what that implied as he stood to one side on what would have been the flag deck aboard an actual warship and watched the enormous space station, gleaming in the reflected light of the F6 star called Darius, growing larger on the visual display as MANS Genesis approached it. The station—known officially as Darius Prime—orbited the planet Gamma, Darius' only habitable world, and at the moment, it was over Gamma's night side, just approaching the terminator. The planetary surface below it sparkled with lines and beads of light, and there were four other stations to keep it company, although none of them were remotely the same size as Manticor's' Hephaestus or Vulcan.

Or the size they had been, at any rate.
His eyes moved to the ships taking form in the shipyards Darius Prime supported. Eventually, those ships would become the first units of the Leonard Detweiler class, he knew, although it wouldn't happen anywhere near as soon as he wished. The much smaller units of the Shark class in parking orbit beyond Darius Prime were visible evidence of why he wished that. Most of the still far from complete Detweilers were already larger than the Sharks—in many cases, substantially larger. When they were completed, they would be far, far tougher—and far more dangerous—than their smaller predecessors, and he was going to need the capability they represented as quickly as he could get it. Unfortunately, wishing couldn't change anything.

His lips twitched briefly at the thought, and he turned his attention to the Sharks. Genesis had arrived almost three hours before her scheduled ETA, yet it was evident the fleet was already home and waiting for him. Well, that was fine with him. No doubt the Mesan Alignment Navy would someday acquire the taste for formal reviews of the fleet—and the punctillious timing which went them—which seemed to be a part of every other navy in space. So far, it hadn't, and given how little use he had for pomp, he'd prefer for that to take as long as possible.

Not that they don't deserve a formal review. His face hardened with mingled satisfaction and a degree of apprehension as he reflected upon the reports of Oyster Bay's effectiveness. I don't think anyone else in history ever managed to pull off this successful an operation. Certainly not against someone as good as the Manties!

The casualty count had been higher than projected, and part of him regretted that. He supposed that was foolish of him, given where all of this had to lead eventually, yet there it was. He couldn't quite avoid thinking about all the children who'd never even seen it coming. Funny how that bothered him when thinking about all of the other millions who were going to be killed eventually didn't. He wondered if that was because those other millions were still an abstraction for him, still only a potential, whereas the dead from the Manticoran space stations and in the city of Yawata Crossing weren't. He hoped that wasn't the reason. All of those additional deaths were coming—he couldn't have changed that at this point even if he'd tried—and he couldn't afford to brood over them this way when they finally arrived.

Well, you won't, he told himself. By the time they come along, you'll have enough emotional scar tissue to keep you from losing any sleep. And, be honest with yourself, Albrecht—you'll be damned glad you do.

Every one of those slaves had been born here in Darius, and not one of them had ever left the system. Their knowledge of what was happening elsewhere in the galaxy, of the history of Mesa, or of their own history had been carefully controlled for generations. They'd been aware for those same generations that they and their parents and grandparents had been laboring to build first the basic industry and then the specialized infrastructure to support a massive navy, but they were convinced it was intended as a defensive fleet.

cthia wrote:Though interrupted to analyze, contiguous textev follows...

Mission of Honor Chapter 34 wrote:The "private yacht" was about the size of most navies' battlecruisers, and almost as heavily armed. Which didn't prevent it from being one of the most luxuriously appointed vessels in the galaxy . . . as well as one of the fastest. It had made the passage from the Mesa System forty percent more rapidly than anyone else's ship could have managed it.

And almost as heavily armed. My spider senses are off the chart again. Why would they be so heavily armed if they weren't prepared for ship to ship(s) confrontations?

Every one of those slaves had been born here in Darius, and not one of them had ever left the system. Their knowledge of what was happening elsewhere in the galaxy, of the history of Mesa, or of their own history had been carefully controlled for generations. They'd been aware for those same generations that they and their parents and grandparents had been laboring to build first the basic industry and then the specialized infrastructure to support a massive navy, but they were convinced it was intended as a defensive fleet.

cthia wrote:As more than Thomas Caparelli's match, my recommendation to the Alignment is to send a substantial force to each of Manticore, Grayson and Haven. I think the Detweilers will be hard hitting long distance strikers — targeting unsuspecting enemy fleets from beyond even Apollo's range. Targeting each ship and launching under computer control that will bring each missile attack in simultaneously.

One of the Lenny Dets that had had been sitting in-system for awhile were so confident in their stealth that they made contact with the Hermes Buoy and broadcasted... "We're simply here to kick ass and take names, but hold your introductions in favor of ours - which should be arriving just about... NOW!"

And just like that Home Fleet is gone. "What you can do Apollo. We can do better."

Any Home Fleet just sitting around the planet as usual won't be sent to the breakers. They'll be sent to the toasters.

Imagine an RMN capability to launch Apollo in undetected launches. Such a capability will make what Honor accomplished at Cerberus while coasting seem like child's play.

"Oh, the idea's just fine, Father. The problem is how likely it is that we wouldn't get away with it. Let's face it, Oyster Bay was in many ways a one-off operation. It succeeded because the Manties didn't have a clue about our capabilities. Well, now they do—have a clue, I mean. They still don't know how we did it, but they damned well know we did do it, and if nothing else, they're going to be pouncing on every 'ghost footprint' their hyper sensors pick up with everything they've got. And, frankly, the fact that we haven't been able to come up with an effective detector for the spider drive doesn't fill me with unbounded confidence that the Manties might not have something we don't even know about that could do the job. I think it's unlikely, but I'm not prepared to assume it's impossible."

snip

"Secondly," Benjamin continued then, "the force levels we'd require would actually be higher. Oyster Bay succeeded because we could plan on achieving total surprise and our targets were civilian installations. They weren't armored, they didn't have any active or passive defenses in operation, and they couldn't dodge. After what happened to their home system, I can guarantee you no one as experienced as the Manties is going to let us catch their battle fleet under circumstances like that. At the very minimum, their impellers are going to be permanently hot. Most likely, they'll have minimum station-keeping wedges up, for that matter, and they're going to have their damned FTL recon platforms deployed widely enough to give them plenty of time to get wedges and sidewalls fully up before anything gets close enough to attack.

jdtinIA wrote:We know that a wedge cannot come into contact with another wedge or physical structure without things going all explody.
Does the spider drive have the same effect?

jdtinIA wrote:What happens to a ship or space station or whatever if one of the spider legs comes into contact?

jdtinIA wrote:What happens to a wedge if it and a spider leg intersect?

Mission of Honor Chapter 34 wrote:The "private yacht" was about the size of most navies' battlecruisers, and almost as heavily armed. Which didn't prevent it from being one of the most luxuriously appointed vessels in the galaxy . . . as well as one of the fastest. It had made the passage from the Mesa System forty percent more rapidly than anyone else's ship could have managed it.

cthia wrote: And almost as heavily armed. My spider senses are off the chart again. Why would they be so heavily armed if they weren't prepared for ship to ship(s) confrontations?

munroburton wrote:Albrecht's yacht is the equivalent of Elizabeth's Duke of Cromarty. Which is not intended to enter ship-to-ship confrontations either, but is nonetheless heavily armed.

I suspect the almost-BC is so Albrecht's yacht can blow away any patrolling cruiser accidentally encountering his ship. Or maybe he just has an ego to tend to.

Every one of those slaves had been born here in Darius, and not one of them had ever left the system. Their knowledge of what was happening elsewhere in the galaxy, of the history of Mesa, or of their own history had been carefully controlled for generations. They'd been aware for those same generations that they and their parents and grandparents had been laboring to build first the basic industry and then the specialized infrastructure to support a massive navy, but they were convinced it was intended as a defensive fleet.

cthia wrote:When the Lennys come. They will come in a massive force. A massive force just to sit on them?

And the obvious implication regarding the slaves being brainwashed into thinking they were building such a massive navy for *gasp* defensive purposes.

munroburton wrote:The massive navy might be what the Renaissance Factor's amalgamated fleets will eventually become, with the LDs supporting them. There's textev somewhere about that, out of a Detweiler mouth.

The LDs are supposed to operate as a supplementary weapons system to the RF's navy, which is supposed to be in line with galactic conventions. Until recently, that was set by the SLN - now it'll be set by the Haven Sector.

cthia wrote:As more than Thomas Caparelli's match, my recommendation to the Alignment is to send a substantial force to each of Manticore, Grayson and Haven. I think the Detweilers will be hard hitting long distance strikers — targeting unsuspecting enemy fleets from beyond even Apollo's range. Targeting each ship and launching under computer control that will bring each missile attack in simultaneously.

One of the Lenny Dets that had had been sitting in-system for awhile were so confident in their stealth that they made contact with the Hermes Buoy and broadcasted... "We're simply here to kick ass and take names, but hold your introductions in favor of ours - which should be arriving just about... NOW!"

And just like that Home Fleet is gone. "What you can do Apollo. We can do better."

Any Home Fleet just sitting around the planet as usual won't be sent to the breakers. They'll be sent to the toasters.

Imagine an RMN capability to launch Apollo in undetected launches. Such a capability will make what Honor accomplished at Cerberus while coasting seem like child's play.

munroburton wrote:Benjamin Detweiler has already deep-sixed that idea.

"Oh, the idea's just fine, Father. The problem is how likely it is that we wouldn't get away with it. Let's face it, Oyster Bay was in many ways a one-off operation. It succeeded because the Manties didn't have a clue about our capabilities. Well, now they do—have a clue, I mean. They still don't know how we did it, but they damned well know we did do it, and if nothing else, they're going to be pouncing on every 'ghost footprint' their hyper sensors pick up with everything they've got. And, frankly, the fact that we haven't been able to come up with an effective detector for the spider drive doesn't fill me with unbounded confidence that the Manties might not have something we don't even know about that could do the job. I think it's unlikely, but I'm not prepared to assume it's impossible."

snip

"Secondly," Benjamin continued then, "the force levels we'd require would actually be higher. Oyster Bay succeeded because we could plan on achieving total surprise and our targets were civilian installations. They weren't armored, they didn't have any active or passive defenses in operation, and they couldn't dodge. After what happened to their home system, I can guarantee you no one as experienced as the Manties is going to let us catch their battle fleet under circumstances like that. At the very minimum, their impellers are going to be permanently hot. Most likely, they'll have minimum station-keeping wedges up, for that matter, and they're going to have their damned FTL recon platforms deployed widely enough to give them plenty of time to get wedges and sidewalls fully up before anything gets close enough to attack.

munroburton wrote:All those considerations apply regardless of whether the Sharks or Leonards are used in a second attack.

Remember, the Leonards were meant to carry out Oyster Bay. Not to destroy those battle fleets - they would've done it to each other afterwards.

Apollo upset that plan by making it possible for the RMN to annihilate the RHN and SLN simultaneously.