TFT Snippet #2

Fireflair wrote:The obvious thing to do, in my humble opinion, is to launch a probe of some sort on the far side of the planet from the OBS. Send the probe up and away from the planet toward a moon. See what happens and how the OBS responds.

And if the response is to phone home and prematurely wake up whatever is under the Temple? What then? Doesn't sound like a great idea ...

mhicks wrote:To me anything leaving the orbit of Safehold would be considered hostile to the Langhorn design and shot by the OBS. Anything leaving orbit short of using hyperdrive would get destroyed the minute it was detected. Use of Hyper drive would be picked up by the Gbaba, so it is a catch 22 trying to get away from the planet. Then any colony in the star system would still be capable of getting targeted by the OBS. Kinetic Energy Weapons take objects and shoot them at super fast speeds to cause massive damage. The weapon can use just about anything it can get its hands on and put in a magnetic rail gun type sled. If they are going to get off Safehold and just try to "start over" leaving the safeholdians behind would require going far away to another system and hope the OBS doesn't send in any high speed asteroids it shot at the new colony.

I don't see it. This really is getting into fantasy defence systems. Especially the bit about shooting unpowered, unguided ballistic projectiles, asteroids, yet, over interstellar distances with sufficient accuracy to hit anything. Even in system it is not very dangerous. As someone else has posted the thing about hitting planets with KEWs is they can't dodge, spacecraft can. In the Honorverse they even gave up on contact nukes, far less contact lumps of metal/rock and once the enemy missiles go ballistic they are a joke, except in very special circumstances when the target doesn't know it's under attack.

Nope, the danger of the OBS to space travel, is probably in the near Safehold stage, then in waking up the 'thing under the Temple'

A door big enough for an all up assault shuttle, might well be big enough for an all up interceptor 'starfighter' with it's own version of OWL aboard. We just don't know very much about TF military craft.

Randomiser wrote:

mhicks wrote:To me anything leaving the orbit of Safehold would be considered hostile to the Langhorn design and shot by the OBS. Anything leaving orbit short of using hyperdrive would get destroyed the minute it was detected. Use of Hyper drive would be picked up by the Gbaba, so it is a catch 22 trying to get away from the planet. Then any colony in the star system would still be capable of getting targeted by the OBS. Kinetic Energy Weapons take objects and shoot them at super fast speeds to cause massive damage. The weapon can use just about anything it can get its hands on and put in a magnetic rail gun type sled. If they are going to get off Safehold and just try to "start over" leaving the safeholdians behind would require going far away to another system and hope the OBS doesn't send in any high speed asteroids it shot at the new colony.

I don't see it. This really is getting into fantasy defence systems. Especially the bit about shooting unpowered, unguided ballistic projectiles, asteroids, yet, over interstellar distances with sufficient accuracy to hit anything. Even in system it is not very dangerous. As someone else has posted the thing about hitting planets with KEWs is they can't dodge, spacecraft can. In the Honorverse they even gave up on contact nukes, far less contact lumps of metal/rock and once the enemy missiles go ballistic they are a joke, except in very special circumstances when the target doesn't know it's under attack.

Nope, the danger of the OBS to space travel, is probably in the near Safehold stage, then in waking up the 'thing under the Temple'

A door big enough for an all up assault shuttle, might well be big enough for an all up interceptor 'starfighter' with it's own version of OWL aboard. We just don't know very much about TF military craft.

With all respect, but shooting relativistic projectiles over interstellar distances is perfectly possible. And you could actualky hit a planet with it. Yes, the interstellar gas may deviate projectile a tiny bit, but considering the inertia it would took a lot of lightyears to seriously hamper the ability to hit planet. The only risk us that your projectile may hit something like dust - which would kill the projectile.

Randomiser wrote:
Nope, the danger of the OBS to space travel, is probably in the near Safehold stage, then in waking up the 'thing under the Temple'

A door big enough for an all up assault shuttle, might well be big enough for an all up interceptor 'starfighter' with it's own version of OWL aboard. We just don't know very much about TF military craft.

It was plainly stated that OBS have laser defense platforms - which took out OWL SNARC's. I see no reason to assume that the same lasers aren't capable of covering the entire orbital space of Safehold. At most, it would require the re-targeting array to send the beam around the planet.

Dilandu wrote:With all respect, but shooting relativistic projectiles over interstellar distances is perfectly possible. And you could actualky hit a planet with it. Yes, the interstellar gas may deviate projectile a tiny bit, but considering the inertia it would took a lot of lightyears to seriously hamper the ability to hit planet. The only risk us that your projectile may hit something like dust - which would kill the projectile.

A rail gun mass driver firing from near dead rest (orbital speed) won't be able to accelerate a projectile to relativstic speeds without strapping an Honorverse wedge system on the bullet. The little 2 person skimmer is likely capable of at least an order of magnitude greater speed outside of atmosphere than what you could accelerate a projectile to with an EM driver.

Honorverse KEWs were wedge driven for this reason.

We really need more textev to do much more than blindly guess here. What we have from the first book indicates a number of orbital bombardment platforms, likely widely spaced but covering most if not all of the planet, with beam weapon point defenses capable of taking out at least small craft that approach too close to the platform. That's all we've got.

I really need to go back and re-read the first few books again, if not the whole series. I don't recall if we have textev of the skimmer's full capabilities, much less the assault shuttle in the cave. We know the skimmer can operate outside of the atmosphere, but I don't think we've been told if it's capable of limited interstellar travel, its range, or its top speed outside of atmosphere/gravity well. With the limited info we have, it does seem a reasonable though risky approach to think the skimmers or assault craft could exit the gravity well of the planet, accelerate in interstellar space on a long loop, and set up a kinetic strike on all of the platforms simultaneously. Very risky... if you missed or even hit the platform without disabling it there's no telling what it will do according to the story. But it may be workable, depending on what we don't know about the skimmers/assault shuttle. Fixed orbital defenses, especially those looking ONLY down, are wide open to outside strike.

NervousEnergy wrote:We really need more textev to do much more than blindly guess here. What we have from the first book indicates a number of orbital bombardment platforms, likely widely spaced but covering most if not all of the planet, with beam weapon point defenses capable of taking out at least small craft that approach too close to the platform. That's all we've got.

We already knew that they have laser anti-missile defenses, capable of detecting & destroying stealthed & presumably completely passive SNARC "thousands of kilometers from the platform". Which means that we are talking about dozens of megawatt/gigawatt level of laser power at very least. A simple array of re-targeting mirrors would allow the laser platform to control orbital space of all Safehold.

ryndieum wrote:Forgive the guy that can't keep characters straight. Who is Ruhsail in this context?

Duke of Eastshare. Marshal of the ICA in Sidemark and Loyal supporter.
I can generally keep them straight but have a boat load of trouble spelling them.

Fireflair wrote:I guess I'm a wagering sort of person, as I would bet money on things at this point. I would wager that the OBS is not a danger to something departing the atmosphere. One, as noted, it hasn't bothered the skimmer and didn't take out the probe until it approached the platform(s). Two, also as noted, if they've got space flight they're way past electricity.

I feel that the OBS system wasn't meant to be the grand god in the sky that smites everyone. It was more meant to slap anyone who might try to violate the proscriptions. So it's entirely possible that it was told to ignore TF tech in general. The archangels, at the end of the war, knew they had won. They had no clue about the cave or any contingency plans that might have been made and thus no reason to tell the OBS not to let TF tech wander about. In fact it would have made their own travels more complicated by having to risk the danger of some sort of IFF system and it's radiated signals which they were very concerned about.

I don't think I'd try to leave the system, I'd just get away from the planet where I could deploy some factories and start building up. Maybe, just to be safe, on the far side of a moon from Safehold and the OBS.

Just don't bet anything you cannot afford to loose.
I had a lot of the same views and they are being picked over like the left overs at a beggars banquet.

maybe it is just me but i doubt that skimmers can get much beyond orbit.

while i'm guessing, I think it reasonable to say that its job is to basically fly around the battlefield gathering info and occasionally shooting things.

after all it is called a recon skimmer. it isn't a fighter or a shuttle, assault or otherwise.

clearly orbit or low orbit is within its abilities but deep space? I don't think so.

shuttles likely have much greater range, and in other RFC universes assault shuttles are heavily armed and armoured, making them a much better choice for either a strike at the OBS or if the OBS ignores it going to asteroid belt or another planet to start fed industry out of OBS' reach.

C. O. Thompson wrote:

Fireflair wrote:I guess I'm a wagering sort of person, as I would bet money on things at this point. I would wager that the OBS is not a danger to something departing the atmosphere. One, as noted, it hasn't bothered the skimmer and didn't take out the probe until it approached the platform(s). Two, also as noted, if they've got space flight they're way past electricity.

I feel that the OBS system wasn't meant to be the grand god in the sky that smites everyone. It was more meant to slap anyone who might try to violate the proscriptions. So it's entirely possible that it was told to ignore TF tech in general. The archangels, at the end of the war, knew they had won. They had no clue about the cave or any contingency plans that might have been made and thus no reason to tell the OBS not to let TF tech wander about. In fact it would have made their own travels more complicated by having to risk the danger of some sort of IFF system and it's radiated signals which they were very concerned about.

I don't think I'd try to leave the system, I'd just get away from the planet where I could deploy some factories and start building up. Maybe, just to be safe, on the far side of a moon from Safehold and the OBS.

Just don't bet anything you cannot afford to loose.
I had a lot of the same views and they are being picked over like the left overs at a beggars banquet.

There appears to be extremely little evidence that it actually does anything. Surely the author would not be so cruel as to have the characters put up a titanic struggle and at the end discover it was inactive except for its defenses. After all, the author never pulls tricks on his readers.