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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster | |
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by kzt » Sat Nov 23, 2019 7:24 pm | |
kzt
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Yeah. And I think David said that included a 6m diameter rock at 0.8C. Which is easily going to handle the fragments of a missile.
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster | |
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by Loren Pechtel » Sat Nov 23, 2019 8:25 pm | |
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Yup, that's exactly what I see. They consider small-scale setbacks but are unable to consider any large scale problem. Consider how they weeded out the MAlign guys on Earth--arrest them. It took a chance discovery of one agent to reveal the suicide protocol but once your enemy knows about it it's so easy to exploit. |
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster | |
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by TheMadPenguin » Sat Nov 23, 2019 11:26 pm | |
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They (the SLN) do not have a budget big enough to do more than repair/reload what they now have. |
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster | |
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by Loren Pechtel » Sun Nov 24, 2019 2:29 am | |
Loren Pechtel
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A minefield here would probably be built not to engage someone who runs into it. The minefield controller monitors the wormhole and only activates the field if something comes through and doesn't squawk friendly. A passing ship won't trigger it. |
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster | |
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by Loren Pechtel » Sun Nov 24, 2019 2:38 am | |
Loren Pechtel
Posts: 1324
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It depends on how quickly a missile can change vectors. So long as this is not a limiting factor the missile simply generates the same horizontal vector it's target generates. It has more acceleration, it will be able to match any maneuver it's target makes. The only way to defeat it is if it can't change the angle it's pointing fast enough. While the target has no wedge to lock onto it also has no wedge to mess up the observations. It's target is one huge energy source not matched by anything else around. |
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster | |
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by Loren Pechtel » Sun Nov 24, 2019 2:44 am | |
Loren Pechtel
Posts: 1324
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Make the missiles spread out in flight, then aim at the target before they enter the PD zone. Each can be aimed for impact although they will have to shut down their wedge for the very last part of their flight--going ballistic at that point won't be enough to generate a miss.
Space dust is very thin. The plasma cloud of a vaporized missile packs an energy that makes even a contact nuke look like a wet firecracker. |
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster | |
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by Loren Pechtel » Sun Nov 24, 2019 2:51 am | |
Loren Pechtel
Posts: 1324
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Honorverse wormholes are basically immune from assault. I'm not sure they're immune to a probe, though:
As others have suggested, gather old ships for a maximum mass transit. No crews, no missile weapons (although the tubes may be used to throw EW devices), grasers operational. Everything is being controlled from the one manned ship involved--a dispatch boat rigged for maximum stealth that's anchored to the back of something big--it's not moving under it's own power. The force comes through, does whatever damage it can but is of course destroyed although they attempt to avoid reactor explosions (the manned ship can jettison any reactor and the reactors are rigged to be jettisoned if things seem out of control--basically a deadman switch.) The intent of all this is to ensure there's a lot of wreckage--and the dispatch boat is lying doggo amongst that wreckage. Once it's drifted clear it hightails it out of there. |
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster | |
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by kzt » Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:09 am | |
kzt
Posts: 11360
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Perhaps not as thin as you might think.
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster | |
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by Galactic Sapper » Sun Nov 24, 2019 1:06 pm | |
Galactic Sapper
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That's great and all, but how do unarmed civilian ships deal with the same debris? Even freighters would need the equivalent of Star Trek's navigational deflector arrays to survive everyday travelling. |
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Re: Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster | |
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by Brigade XO » Sun Nov 24, 2019 4:17 pm | |
Brigade XO
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A thought about sending a bunch of outmoded SDs though That Wormhole with a DB hidden in the mass transit to scoot away (presuming it survives a massive weapons attach and the wormhole is not actually the killer).
1st, per RFC you can't send an unmanned ship through a wormhole on automatic. You have to have crew to to make the decisions, the last second adjustments and handle the change to sails, go through and back to sails then bring up the impellers. So just maybe you could have all X obsolete SD's controlled by the SD but that might be a bit more than a non-trivial excercise. 2nd, you are talking about A DB. Otherwise a small soap bubble that is going into something that is probably going to spread multiple SDs with incomming fire. Said soap bubble is going to have to deal with all sorts of debris comming at it from exploding SDs which just might be a little hazardous to it's health. 3rd, you are talking about going through a wormhole for which you have NO IDEA where it comes out and, presuming the DB can get get up enough speed to the hell out of the powered missile envelope of whatever was waiting on top of the exit lane for the wormhole, it still needs to find it's way---home? Well, the Harvest Joy was Star Knight heavy cruiser refitted as a survey ship to explore potential wormholes. It had a good sized crew, was optomised to both research the wormhole it was going to enter and then do the same job on the other side (to come back) plus do a very intense astro survey of wherever it found itself to discover where the wormhole lead to. And, along with the capacity to handle long term deployments with that crew, it had a lot of extra supplies on board. Why, because if you can't- for any reason- go back through the wormhole (probably because the tranist broke something you can't fix to get the sails back up) you are going to have to do it the "old fashioned way". After figuring out where you are you have to get into hyper and head for someplace you can identify before your food and environmental endurence runs out. A DB doesn't have much room to start with and a minimal crew. It doesn't have much in the way of cargo space to begin with, mostly it carries information/dispaches and perhaps a couple of passengers (in less that palatial space and comfort). So, with the presumption that said DB can get the hell into hyperspace -and get away from any attempted pursuit before it can be killed by whatever was camped out on the incomming lane of the wormhole, you have to next figure out both where you are and what that position is to anyplace you can get to with what you have on-board. The guy that was running the Harvest Joy's research program for the transist that ended up at the Lynx teminus (but didn't go along on the attempted transit from Torch) talked about months and months of time getting back to anywhere on a research trip where they couldn't take the ship back through. I don't think your average DB is going to handle even several months in hyperspace. Interesting idea, don't give it much chance of success. |
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