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Wormhole Assault: MA Style

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Re: Wormhole Assault: MA Style
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Jan 13, 2021 5:38 pm

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cthia wrote:At any rate, if I am correct, it doesn't change the fact the RMN doesn't expect any targeting problems, applied to the norm. No mere enemy is supposed to be able to get close enough to hide behind the junction.

I'm not actually sure "the junction" is a single point you can hide behind.

I can't recall anything in the books that says whether or not the (now) 7 links to remote termini are colocated together in a giant blob (just with slightly different approach vectors) or if they might be thousands of km apart just all loosely grouped within the general area called the junction.



Modern forts are going to be hanging back a fair ways from the emergence point(s), so they have distance to bring their missile pods and LACs to bearleaving energy weapon fire to mines and remote energy platforms, rather than exposing themselves to energy weapons fire from anybody suicidal enough to make a hostile transit. And they're going to be above, below, and on all side of the emergence point(s). So it seems to me that even if we have a single giant "blob" of emergence points and grav shear the terminus will be covering only a few of degrees of sky from each fort - so even if the fort(s) directly on a given side of it are destroyed I think any "blind spot" where one or another of the remaining forts can't see (without looking through the terminus area) would be both very small and very close to the terminus. And of course the remaining forts (and the LACs stationed on them) can arc recon drones around the terminus to get a better look.

And if the 7 termini are actually scattered around then presumably each one would be smaller, and the first shell of forts around each provide even more lines of sight around the others.
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Re: Wormhole Assault: MA Style
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed Jan 13, 2021 7:56 pm

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cthia wrote:True, and true. But, all of the many ships and their sensors are not coordinating with each other. It is most likely going to come down to one particular ship that either will or won't detect the Lenny. Sure, the middle of downtown MWJ is congested traffic, but there's no reason the LD can't remain on the outskirts of town until time to move in.

My guess is that the LD won't be detected in time. And once it gets into optimal firing position. Game over. Once it gets into optimal firing position, it would have seeded the area with its own surprises.


And herein lies the reason why the strategy of sneaking to the behind of a transit lane makes no sense: there's a much better firing position that is easier to reach. The LD does not need to get into the Junction hyperlimit at all. It can remain outside and simply a launch grasers, which are much smaller than the monitor-sized behemoth that launched it. Therefore, they are much more likely to remain undetected or, if detected, undiagnosed as a threat. Over the years, there must have been lots of accidents and spillage in the Junction, so chunks of metal are not uncommon.

In fact, for this strategy, you don't need an LD at all. This is the strategy that brought the Silver Bullets to the Sigma Draconis System (Beowulf): just dump them overboard from a freighter. No one is going to bat an eye at a freighter translating down from hyper 15-30 million km out from the Junction. If there's no one nearby, open the doors and drop the torpedoes; if there's someone nearby, pretend that it's all cargo and go through the Junction.

I still don't know what the LDs are useful for. They sound like a solution in search of a problem.

Will they be detected? And if they are detected, will they be detected in time? My vision of the LDs is that you cannot let something that big get that close. Once an LD gets into optimal firing position, it won't matter much if you "once knew" where it "was."


That depends on how many targets it's trying to attack and if they have walls up or not. One LD against a handful of SDs or forts with walls down, sure, the stealth attack wins. Against at least one of them with walls up, especially if it is a bubble wall (no throat or kilt), then you can't surprise the victim and take them out before they fire back. And once they fire back, the LD is toast if it is nearby.

So what's the optimal firing position for an LD? A million km out, at least, outside of energy weapons range.

We do know what happens. All the Harvest Joys that didn't wait for the final results told us. They are destroyed if their descent into the "maelstrom" is on the wrong bearing.


Care to provide textev?

I don't remember any time the text talking about unsuccessful transits, much less about beam weapons going through transit lanes.

That depends on which of us is right about whether the LD can operate close enough to kiss you. It'd be fitting if they had a maneuver called the pickpocket. LOL


See above and below.

But if an LD is hugging and hiding behind "the wall" of the junction, the remaining forts - that the operation didn't specifically take out initially - have no shot against an LD which has intentionally chosen that exact moment to announce it's arrival.

Don't the LDs have to be detected, first, to be successfully fired upon? Can a blocked fort still control it's mines? Can autonomous mines attack something they don't detect? They will be firing blind. And of course, they can't fire thru the junction.


The other forts control missiles and mines all over the Junction volume. If the LD is detected ("announces its arrival") and is inside the hyperlimit, it will be taken out.

Which is why it is imperative for the LD to remain undetected. It mustn't fire energy weapons or launch impeller-driven missiles. And if it won't fire energy weapons, why get to knife-fighting range in the first place?

It's also preferable for the attacker to retain an exit strategy. So it's either doing a high-speed pass through the hyperlimit or it remains outside.
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Re: Wormhole Assault: MA Style
Post by kzt   » Wed Jan 13, 2021 8:18 pm

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It’s perfectly possible that the LDs are a solution looking for a problem. Perhaps the MAN said ‘we got this really cool stealth tech. How can we go crazy with this?’
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Re: Wormhole Assault: MA Style
Post by munroburton   » Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:04 pm

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cthia wrote:I recall that. I think I also recall Honor stating how they would be used to shred metal transiting the junction. Plus, I was under the impression all of those mounts would be part of a single platform. In my knowledge, trained on the emergence zone. But, a single platform has to be incorrect if it is going to protect the entire junction. No?

At any rate, if I am correct, it doesn't change the fact the RMN doesn't expect any targeting problems, applied to the norm. No mere enemy is supposed to be able to get close enough to hide behind the junction.


UH wrote:“Admiral Foraker does have a tendency to think outside the box,” Honor acknowledged with a smile. “In this case, though, what she’s suggested is basically an array of remotely deployed energy weapons. Capital ship-sized weapons, as a matter of fact. She’s thinking something like Moriarty, not Mycroft. In fact, she’s already worked out the quickest way to run up a remote platform tied into the central fire control system of a standard terminus fort.”

“I thought that was what the minefields we already have were for, My Lady.”

“Oh, they are! But those are basically one-shot—either bomb-pumped platforms or IDEWs that get one shot, then have to recharge between engagements. She’s talking about feeding these things with broadcast power for the plasma capacitors. If her numbers hold up, they’d be good for at least five or six full-power shots each before the platforms had to shut down until the maintenance crews could recharge the capacitor reservoirs. So if these Solly grasers are as good as Phil seems to be suggesting, and given the fact that a Scientist-class SD mounts—what? sixty-four? sixty-five?—grasers, stripping a couple of hundred of them could let us build a really nasty defensive array, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I think you could call it that,” Commander Clayton said, her expression suddenly very thoughtful indeed. The thought of what nine or ten thousand ship-of-the-wall-sized grasers could do to any target emerging from a wormhole terminus—when it could have neither wedge nor sidewalls for protection—was…sobering.


Without bringing any of their forts, warships, LACs, one-shot minefields, missile pods or IDEWs into action, they're sitting on a renewable reserve of seventy thousand graser shots. At this point, the shape of the "array" is undecided, but nothing stops them from using several concentric spheres surrounding the Junction.

The Manties want to be very careful with that array. It sounds like something that could create Kugelblitz-type black holes.
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Re: Wormhole Assault: MA Style
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed Jan 13, 2021 11:38 pm

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kzt wrote:It’s perfectly possible that the LDs are a solution looking for a problem. Perhaps the MAN said ‘we got this really cool stealth tech. How can we go crazy with this?’


That thought had occurred to me before, more in the context of the spider drive than stealth (stealth is a consequence). They had this breakthrough in technology and decided they had to do something with it. Because spiders don't have upper limit in mass, they just had to make their ships twice as big as Solly SDs.

Right now, for all we know of LDs, they are white elephants. They are not very good warships once detected, because they have no wedges and thus sidewalls to protect themselves against massed missile fire. They can't fire energy weapons or launch missiles lest they be detected. They also don't have the acceleration to force an engagement with an enemy and their torpedoes can't either. And even if they can close with an enemy, they can't get too close lest they be detected too.

So one of two things:

One, those really are engineering marvel solutions in search of a problem -- and as an engineer, I am guilty and have seen others guilty of overengineering solutions-in-search-of-a-problem just because they can be done -- out of the skunkworks of the MAlign because they are too enamoured with their technical prowess. But lacking real-world experience and especially lacking anyone who will stand up to them, no one pointed out the fatal flaws.

Or, two, that David is holding some secrets up his sleeve which include some capabilities that we aren't aware of.
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Re: Wormhole Assault: MA Style
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Jan 14, 2021 12:38 am

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
kzt wrote:It’s perfectly possible that the LDs are a solution looking for a problem. Perhaps the MAN said ‘we got this really cool stealth tech. How can we go crazy with this?’


That thought had occurred to me before, more in the context of the spider drive than stealth (stealth is a consequence). They had this breakthrough in technology and decided they had to do something with it. Because spiders don't have upper limit in mass, they just had to make their ships twice as big as Solly SDs.

Right now, for all we know of LDs, they are white elephants. They are not very good warships once detected, because they have no wedges and thus sidewalls to protect themselves against massed missile fire. They can't fire energy weapons or launch missiles lest they be detected. They also don't have the acceleration to force an engagement with an enemy and their torpedoes can't either. And even if they can close with an enemy, they can't get too close lest they be detected too.

So one of two things:

One, those really are engineering marvel solutions in search of a problem -- and as an engineer, I am guilty and have seen others guilty of overengineering solutions-in-search-of-a-problem just because they can be done -- out of the skunkworks of the MAlign because they are too enamoured with their technical prowess. But lacking real-world experience and especially lacking anyone who will stand up to them, no one pointed out the fatal flaws.

Or, two, that David is holding some secrets up his sleeve which include some capabilities that we aren't aware of.

I agree that it's likely one or the other.
Though I think the low speed of their torpedoes is less of an issue in an ambush scenario - and their strengths seem to lie in ambush scenarios.

Yes even many freighters have more acceleration than a graser torp. But what the torp does have is lots of endurance. And most ships move on reasonably predictable courses - whether it's a warship on in-system patrol, someone headed to/from a wormhole terminus, or ships traveling between the hyper limit and an inhabited planet, or simply hanging around in orbit. Ships, even warships, aren't usually making high acceleration movements between entirely unguessable points in space.

If a spider ship can get into a system undetected it shouldn't have too much trouble staking out an viable ambush spot. A graser torp launched at a ship arriving in system might not catch it until after the ship's made turnover and started slowing down halfway to its destination - but since the torp has that endurance that's not a major problem.
Heck, it would appear that a torp launched from well outside the hyper limit has the endurance to make its way into planetary orbit to strike its target.


Now none of that appears to justify building a ship as enormous as it seems a Lenny Det is. A smaller ship designed around a torp bay would seem to be able to deliver that kind of ambush strike for less money (or in more places for the same money).

But still, I look forward to seeing what use the MAlign tried to make of them, and what their capabilities really are.
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Re: Wormhole Assault: MA Style
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Thu Jan 14, 2021 12:12 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:I agree that it's likely one or the other.
Though I think the low speed of their torpedoes is less of an issue in an ambush scenario - and their strengths seem to lie in ambush scenarios.

Yes even many freighters have more acceleration than a graser torp. But what the torp does have is lots of endurance. And most ships move on reasonably predictable courses - whether it's a warship on in-system patrol, someone headed to/from a wormhole terminus, or ships traveling between the hyper limit and an inhabited planet, or simply hanging around in orbit. Ships, even warships, aren't usually making high acceleration movements between entirely unguessable points in space.


Ambushes are great for the MAlign-that-was. When they were this shadowy organisation no one knew about and had a handful of ships that were trying to wreak anonymous havoc in the Galaxy, ambushes of unsuspecting foes were an acceptable solution.

For the MAN, in a state of declared war against a prepared foe, that's not the case. Freighters will still likely take least-time-course (thus, predictable) paths from hyperlimit to warehouses and back. And in most systems, orbital warehouses can't be protected.

But warships will not do that, at least not more than once. Warships should never take easy, predictable paths anywhere. And big, important systems like Manticore, Haven, Sigma Draconis, Yeltsin's Star and New Berlin, as well as now Earth, will be able to protect their orbits. Once burned, thrice shy, after all.

And besides, ambushes require that the enemy cooperate. LDs and torpedoes can't hit a target that never wanders into the ambush. You can't conduct a war with ambushes and expect to win.

If a spider ship can get into a system undetected it shouldn't have too much trouble staking out an viable ambush spot. A graser torp launched at a ship arriving in system might not catch it until after the ship's made turnover and started slowing down halfway to its destination - but since the torp has that endurance that's not a major problem.
Heck, it would appear that a torp launched from well outside the hyper limit has the endurance to make its way into planetary orbit to strike its target.


Two problems with that. First, as I said above, it's the problem of getting the torpedo into range of a forewarned target that is making evasive course changes as a matter of routine and never taking direct paths. Warships have power to spare, so they can afford not to take the least-time-course. And they'll keep their open aspects randomly jinking, so the torpedo has no choice but to attempt to attack through the sidewall. We don't know how well a 3-second torpedo shot fares against those.

Second, it's the insertion. You started with "if a spider ship can get into a system undetected." That's not a big "if," it's a huge, enormous one! Hyper translations are not stealthy, so any system with a hyper detection net worth its salt will see the translation to multiple light-days out. The big systems in the list above will see them to light-months. So this undetected insertion is a process taking anywhere between multiple days to multiple months. Ships thus inserted either need very reliable, ahead-of-time intel, or they will always be attacking targets of opportunity.

It gets worse: ships can't be in two places at the same time. So a huge 12-million-tonne LD represents a huge investment and commitment of resources to a plan that may or may not work. Remember: the enemy gets a vote and may vote not to be at the ambush site.

So, again, this is good for ambushing unsuspecting foes, but not good to conduct a war. Impeller ships not attempting to be stealthy have much better mobility. They can react much faster to changing circumstances.

And let's not forget the control freaks that may be trying to micromanage a war from Darius, thus further increasing the control loop delays.

Now none of that appears to justify building a ship as enormous as it seems a Lenny Det is. A smaller ship designed around a torp bay would seem to be able to deliver that kind of ambush strike for less money (or in more places for the same money).

But still, I look forward to seeing what use the MAlign tried to make of them, and what their capabilities really are.


I quote agree. It would be much better to build a dozen BC- and BB-sized ships for the cost of one LD. The big issue with that is that spider acceleration is roughly propotional to the length of the ship, so if you make it too small, it won't get to 150 gravities. That means there's a minimum viable size.

One other failing: capital ships never travel in isolation. Ever heard of a superdreadnought making raids? No. Capital ships not only fly in squadron force most of the time, breaking down to division strength only if forced to cover multiple systems, they are always accompanied by screening elements. Even a puny pre-war DN division would have a force of scouting DDs and would be protected by CAs.

Of the MAN, we've only heard of BB- and monitor-sized ships (Shark and LD, respectively) and scouts (the Ghosts). Is the MAN expecting the LDs to fight in penny packets?

Again, huge resource commitment: each lost LD is a major blow for the MAN and its effective fighting force.

With most Sci-Fi authors, I'd expect such glaring flaws in strategy to be hand-waved away ("don't ask inconvenient questions"). With David, I expect him not only to have thought of this before, I expect him to have held back surprises for us.
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Re: Wormhole Assault: MA Style
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Jan 14, 2021 5:01 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:I agree that it's likely one or the other.
Though I think the low speed of their torpedoes is less of an issue in an ambush scenario - and their strengths seem to lie in ambush scenarios.

Yes even many freighters have more acceleration than a graser torp. But what the torp does have is lots of endurance. And most ships move on reasonably predictable courses - whether it's a warship on in-system patrol, someone headed to/from a wormhole terminus, or ships traveling between the hyper limit and an inhabited planet, or simply hanging around in orbit. Ships, even warships, aren't usually making high acceleration movements between entirely unguessable points in space.


Ambushes are great for the MAlign-that-was. When they were this shadowy organisation no one knew about and had a handful of ships that were trying to wreak anonymous havoc in the Galaxy, ambushes of unsuspecting foes were an acceptable solution.

For the MAN, in a state of declared war against a prepared foe, that's not the case. Freighters will still likely take least-time-course (thus, predictable) paths from hyperlimit to warehouses and back. And in most systems, orbital warehouses can't be protected.

But warships will not do that, at least not more than once. Warships should never take easy, predictable paths anywhere. And big, important systems like Manticore, Haven, Sigma Draconis, Yeltsin's Star and New Berlin, as well as now Earth, will be able to protect their orbits. Once burned, thrice shy, after all.

And besides, ambushes require that the enemy cooperate. LDs and torpedoes can't hit a target that never wanders into the ambush. You can't conduct a war with ambushes and expect to win.
But it's hard to avoid known endpoints - and that's where ships are vulnerable.

Yes a warship could make a massive random dogleg - but if a GSN unit is traveling from Grayson out to the Blackbird yards for refit - or is out patrolling their asteroid mining installations it's going to have to ultimately come near its destination. Guess, within 24 hours or so, that a warship will have to come there and you don't have to chase it all over the system just have a few graser torps waiting there to meet it.

These things aren't like the torpedoes we're familar with, where they've got less than an hours endurance so you have to fire them close to their target for them to have a chance of intercepting it. These are far more like the mistletoe modified recon drones where they've got days of endurance so you can afford to simply have them wait around places that targets will eventually have to come to.

A warship would have to be careful to avoid pointing the open aspect of its wedge where weapons loitering near its destination can't maneuver for an up the kilt shot. (Especially if there is a good size swarm of them waiting nearby). They just have to be anywhere within a couple dozen degrees of your vector and within a million km of range. After all, you do eventually need to stop at the destination which involved matching it's velocity. Hard to do that without eventually pointing your stern towards it.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:You started with "if a spider ship can get into a system undetected." That's not a big "if," it's a huge, enormous one! Hyper translations are not stealthy, so any system with a hyper detection net worth its salt will see the translation to multiple light-days out. The big systems in the list above will see them to light-months. So this undetected insertion is a process taking anywhere between multiple days to multiple months. Ships thus inserted either need very reliable, ahead-of-time intel, or they will always be attacking targets of opportunity.

It gets worse: ships can't be in two places at the same time. So a huge 12-million-tonne LD represents a huge investment and commitment of resources to a plan that may or may not work. Remember: the enemy gets a vote and may vote not to be at the ambush site.

So, again, this is good for ambushing unsuspecting foes, but not good to conduct a war. Impeller ships not attempting to be stealthy have much better mobility. They can react much faster to changing circumstances.

And let's not forget the control freaks that may be trying to micromanage a war from Darius, thus further increasing the control loop delays.
It can definitely be a huge issue. We saw what it took to sneak into a first rate system like Manticore. Stealthy insertion months of flight time out; and they'll be even more alert now. And yes it's a major limitation if you can't use your biggest unit's apparent best tactic against the home system of your enemy. But even in the SEM most system don't have the kind of long range sensative detection arrays that Manticore does. It's easier to infiltrate those systems, and Manticore can't effectively rule or run a war if their warships have to stick to a handful of systems with top of the line orbital grav arrays.

And even for the systems that do have those arrays, kzt is fond of pointing out that they have limited number of reponders that can investigate emergences. You can saturate them by having ships constantly pop in and out of hyper with a few of those emergences being LDs that then sneak into the system. And if the overworked responding DesRons do happen to investigate the emergence that contained and LD it can just slip back into hyper to try again later. Yeah, that alerts the system, but they can't stay on alert forever after such an incident.

And we haven't even gotten into combined arms use. There are possibilities for using conventional forces to attack a secondary or tertiary enemy system or allies, then have LDs wait to ambush the GA forces sent to relieve it. Or even using conventional forces to attack a major fleet base but manouvering to use LDs that accomonied them to essentially be a mobile minefield (though I wouldn't want to try that in a system with Apollo system defense missiles - it'd likely be very hard on the conventional stalking horses).


Still, even with all that I'm not seeing the payoff that justifies building something as big and, presumably, expensive as an LD over more numerous smaller spider ships.

And I do agree that ambushes alone won't win you a war. They're just the only tactic that it seems like the LD - from what we currently know of them - can survive employing. But they seem too much unit for just ambushes, and ambushes alone don't seem enough.
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Re: Wormhole Assault: MA Style
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Thu Jan 14, 2021 6:52 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:But it's hard to avoid known endpoints - and that's where ships are vulnerable.

Yes a warship could make a massive random dogleg - but if a GSN unit is traveling from Grayson out to the Blackbird yards for refit - or is out patrolling their asteroid mining installations it's going to have to ultimately come near its destination. Guess, within 24 hours or so, that a warship will have to come there and you don't have to chase it all over the system just have a few graser torps waiting there to meet it.


True, but my thinking is that the big endpoints are also the ones where you defences can be erected. Ghost Rider recon drones and (very!) active scanning. That should increase the chances of detection considerably, so much so that an LD would never come close. That's the scenario I keep discussing with cthia about whether an LD could come into orbit of Manticore: I think it couldn't. It would be detected before it reached orbit and, not having a sidewall, it's toast.

Torpedoes / Silver Bullets are another story. For one, being much smaller, the chance of detection is also smaller. For another, if it's detected, the loss is not that big to the MAN.

I hadn't considered patrol, though. Does a warship patrolling the Unicorn Belt need to come within 1 million km of any particular rock?

A warship would have to be careful to avoid pointing the open aspect of its wedge where weapons loitering near its destination can't maneuver for an up the kilt shot. (Especially if there is a good size swarm of them waiting nearby). They just have to be anywhere within a couple dozen degrees of your vector and within a million km of range. After all, you do eventually need to stop at the destination which involved matching it's velocity. Hard to do that without eventually pointing your stern towards it.


A station or a yard, yes, you'd stop. Patrols, I don't expect.

Unless there's a reason for that, like an accident or disaster that the warship in question can offer assistance to. And this can be manufactured, of course, so the MAN planners would know when the torpedoes need to be around.

The only thing is that the responding ship is not likely to be any bigger than a CA.

It can definitely be a huge issue. We saw what it took to sneak into a first rate system like Manticore. Stealthy insertion months of flight time out; and they'll be even more alert now. And yes it's a major limitation if you can't use your biggest unit's apparent best tactic against the home system of your enemy. But even in the SEM most system don't have the kind of long range sensative detection arrays that Manticore does. It's easier to infiltrate those systems, and Manticore can't effectively rule or run a war if their warships have to stick to a handful of systems with top of the line orbital grav arrays.


What you're describing is still target of opportunity. The MAN won't know which system the patrolling RMN warships will be at, in which order. So in order to have a decent chance of catching the patrol, they'd have to insert into multiple, which means multiple ships. And again we're talking about using an LD to catch a CA.

Plus, we're taking about an operation that takes a week in n-space. Honor's deep raids into Haven were in the same order of magnitude, with a couple of weeks of travel. So this week spent inserting increases the time each ship is tied down by 33% or so.

It can be done, but the cost/benefit ratio is extremely lopsided. This is an investment of a squadron of 12 million tonne ships for 2 months to destroy a handful of half million tonne cruisers.

And even for the systems that do have those arrays, kzt is fond of pointing out that they have limited number of reponders that can investigate emergences. You can saturate them by having ships constantly pop in and out of hyper with a few of those emergences being LDs that then sneak into the system. And if the overworked responding DesRons do happen to investigate the emergence that contained and LD it can just slip back into hyper to try again later. Yeah, that alerts the system, but they can't stay on alert forever after such an incident.


True. And actually, you don't need ships (plural) to saturate. The same ship can make multiple emergences. And since it takes 12 hours / light-month to for the response force to arrive, the ship can make use of the light lag to make it difficult for the responders to know which one actually happened first.

Another thing is that the distance of the emergence only gives the minimum travel time. The attacking ship can simply travel slower too, waiting for the target system to let its guard down.

And we haven't even gotten into combined arms use. There are possibilities for using conventional forces to attack a secondary or tertiary enemy system or allies, then have LDs wait to ambush the GA forces sent to relieve it. Or even using conventional forces to attack a major fleet base but manouvering to use LDs that accomonied them to essentially be a mobile minefield (though I wouldn't want to try that in a system with Apollo system defense missiles - it'd likely be very hard on the conventional stalking horses).


Yes on the first, no on the second tactic. With MDMs, there's no reason for the forces to get anywhere close to each other. And the conventional forces are manoeuvring at over 500 gravities, so the LDs can't force an engagement.

As for the first tactic, the responding force is going to be in battle stations, with wedge and sidewalls up (and bowwalls for the ships that can). Battle Squadrons will also have scouts out. Not impossible, just difficult to catch them.

And win. Remember that if you don't wipe out the entire opposing force, they will launch missiles. The LD must not have revealed itself, unless it's sure to get a complete wipe out on the first shot.
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Re: Wormhole Assault: MA Style
Post by kzt   » Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:00 am

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It’s the flaming datum problem. When one of your ships suddenly explodes you know there is a sub out there. In a fairly small piece of ocean. You don’t know where exactly. And without the exactly part knowing it’s somewhere in that 60km wide and 2km deep cylinder isn’t really all that useful in terms of deploying weapons.

You can fire every weapon you have and not damage it.

In the same way, knowing that somewhere within a sphere of radius of 3 light seconds of where that battle squadron just blew up at 30 light seconds away is of limited utility. How big is a 3 light second sphere? MDMs have notably stupid and low resolution sensors, which is why they blunder into planets. How close do you think the have to get to detect something that the best MAN sensors can only pick up at a light second? It’s going to be a lot less than a light second. Quite possibly under10,000 km.

How many 10,000 km circles can you fit in a circle 1,800,000 km across? On the order of 30,000. It’s not impractical for a fleet to fire that many. But it takes time. Assume the ship is moving at 10,000 km sec. In 60 seconds the target sphere is 5 light seconds in radius. At that point is is impractical to fire enough missiles to saturate the space.

So don’t think this will be easy.
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