Out of order snippet? WHAT out of order snippet?

runsforcelery wrote:I'm going to have to go back into lower profile mode here, because I'm working on two projects simultaneously that both need attention. I'll try to drop back in from time to time, though, and I'm going to aim for one in-order snippet a week.

Mmmm... last snippet was in September. If "one a week" is the goal, I think we're a couple behind.

Have not posted in a long time, but have been reading for for ever. Hope runsforcelery and family are in good health and Merry Christmas and Happy new Year.Thanks ed PS thank you for all the snippents these past ten years.

EFG567 wrote: <snip> Hope runsforcelery and family are in good health and Merry Christmas and Happy new Year.Thanks ed PS thank you for all the snippents these past ten years.

Second the motion!

runsforcelery wrote:...When they dropped out of space just outside the limit, they were between Mesa and the terminus. No one was getting to it from the system without getting past them, but unless they wanted to simply open fire on anything already in the transit queue, they couldn’t have stopped those already in the queue from leaving the system before they got there anyway. And anything in transit between the limit and the terminus was already able to hyper out the instant anyone came after it, so not even Manticoran LACs could have run down a slow, plodding freighter before it simply vanished....


(Snipped for Wall-o-Text)

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a hyperphysicist, but wouldn't translating between Mesa and the wormhole terminus mean translating into the Resonance Zone? IIRC, translating out of the RZ was tricky but doable, translating into the RZ was "a complicated way to commit suicide."



In other news, please do have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year with your family.

cadastral wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:...When they dropped out of space just outside the limit, they were between Mesa and the terminus. No one was getting to it from the system without getting past them, but unless they wanted to simply open fire on anything already in the transit queue, they couldn’t have stopped those already in the queue from leaving the system before they got there anyway. And anything in transit between the limit and the terminus was already able to hyper out the instant anyone came after it, so not even Manticoran LACs could have run down a slow, plodding freighter before it simply vanished....


(Snipped for Wall-o-Text)

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a hyperphysicist, but wouldn't translating between Mesa and the wormhole terminus mean translating into the Resonance Zone? IIRC, translating out of the RZ was tricky but doable, translating into the RZ was "a complicated way to commit suicide."



In other news, please do have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year with your family.

At a guess, the only ships that move between the planet and the terminus that stay in the resonance zone as a standard procedure are not hyper capable.

It would be much faster for a hyper capable ship to move to clear the hyper limit and the resonance zone, translate up to the alpha band, move to near the terminus, and then translate back down to normal space.

Vince wrote:

cadastral wrote:runsforcelery wrote
...When they dropped out of space just outside the limit, they were between Mesa and the terminus.


I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a hyperphysicist, but wouldn't translating between Mesa and the wormhole terminus mean translating into the Resonance Zone? IIRC, translating out of the RZ was tricky but doable, translating into the RZ was "a complicated way to commit suicide."

It would be much faster for a hyper capable ship to move to clear the hyper limit and the resonance zone, translate up to the alpha band, move to near the terminus, and then translate back down to normal space.

IIRC, a resonance zone extends from the wormhole to the star, NOT to any specific planet. Mesa might well be outside the resonance zone already. With the RMN and RHN just outside the hyperlimit when they arrived, it would be folly for anyone to run in that direction.

Weird Harold wrote:IIRC, a resonance zone extends from the wormhole to the star, NOT to any specific planet. Mesa might well be outside the resonance zone already. With the RMN and RHN just outside the hyperlimit when they arrived, it would be folly for anyone to run in that direction.

A wormhole's resonance zone can be visualized as a cone extending from the terminus (with a comparatively small spherical hyper limit associated with the terminus itself) to a plane passing through the star and perpendicular to a line drawn from the terminus to the star. Part of the resonance zone overlaps the hyper limit.

You can visualize the resonance zone and the hyper limits as a conical magician's hat (the resonance zone) with a large ball* (the star's hyper limit) stuffed halfway into the bottom and a very small ball* (the terminus' hyper limit) stuck on the very top of the hat. The half of the large ball inside the hat represents the overlapping portions of the hyper limit and resonance zone.

Habitable planets are inside the star's hyper limit, and will also be inside the resonance zone for half a planetary year. Depending on the amount of ships a force has arriving at a system and how many ships try to run for it, the force trying to intercept the running ships may not be able to intercept all of them, even by micro-jumping around the just past the hyper limit. Hyper limits are enormous spheres, and if the ships running away both spread out and exceed the number of ships in the arriving at the system, some of them may get away.

* Both balls are spherical.

cadastral wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:...When they dropped out of space just outside the limit, they were between Mesa and the terminus. No one was getting to it from the system without getting past them


(Snipped for Wall-o-Text)

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a hyperphysicist, but wouldn't translating between Mesa and the wormhole terminus mean translating into the Resonance Zone? IIRC, translating out of the RZ was tricky but doable, translating into the RZ was "a complicated way to commit suicide."

Good point. IIRC The RZ fans out from the terminus to the edges of the hyper limit. So dropping out of hyper anywhere near a direct line between the terminus and the limit would be in the very heart of the RZ.

However I do seem to recall that the strength of the RZ, and hence its level of danger, is somehow proportional to the size of the Junction/Terminus. So while Manticore's RZ is a real ship killer, even right up to the hyper limit, I suspect Mesa's RZ being a single termini is probably far weaker. That might make dropping out in it over near the hyper limit a manageable risk.

(Of course another possibility is that David didn't have a specific reason to dig into the exact ship dispositions of the capture of Mesa before. Even his forum posts don't get the kind of research and cross checking that the books do - so maybe he was too hasty in thinking that was what they did)

(Of course another possibility is that David didn't have a specific reason to dig into the exact ship dispositions of the capture of Mesa before. Even his forum posts don't get the kind of research and cross checking that the books do - so maybe he was too hasty in thinking that was what they did)

He was talking about what Mike and 10th Fleet did when she arrived at Mesa. Essentialy having a number of the lighter units drop out of hyper at various places around the hyperlimit of Mesa and relative to the Mesa-Visagoth wormhole . They didn't have enough (or actualy any) information to specificaly stop particular ships from getting out of the Mesa hyper limit but they would be in a position to stop some of them. They didn't try to catch everything nor did they, apparently, mess with the queue on the outbound lane to Visagoth. Those ships that were still deep in the Mesa system would be another story and could be stopped. Anything incomming from Visagoth through the worm hole would be essentialy at dead slow and could be forced to comply with boarding etc.
Mike's primary concerns would have been getting the Mesa SDF to surrender (showing up with the 10th Manticore and the Haven fleets would demonstrate the futility of armed intervention- and MSDF did surrender) then start tieing down the rest of the system including such ships aready outbound or scrambling to flee back across the hyper limit and jump out.

Jonathan_S wrote:Good point. IIRC The RZ fans out from the terminus to the edges of the hyper limit. So dropping out of hyper anywhere near a direct line between the terminus and the limit would be in the very heart of the RZ.

A resonance zone pinches IN, rather than fans out. From the hyperlimit of the Terminus to the diameter of the star (and/or other body big enough to have a hyperlimit, like a Jovian planet.)

From the terminus to the star would be a straight line through the hyperlimit, but not to the full diameter of the star's hyperlimit.