The Alamo Contingency has already failed

penny wrote:Could you point me to the passage you posted about the spider drive captain again please?

In my browser it it is on the previous page of this thread (actually two pages back now, since this is on a new page); the next post after you use the phrase "MA tech - I have been long proposing - can get inside your underwear with you" and somewhat before you say "I have an ongoing disagreement about that 1 light-second". The text comes from chapter 9 of Mission of Honor.

A busy star system is not going to chase down every heat source. Might as well complain that they did not catch the bombs that were shipped to each orbital. The statement about the Silver Bullets was made, not because I do not think they were stealthy, but because you claimed this PROVED that the Malign tech was better in all respects. I will grant that is true in the case of spider drive, but the GA stealth was better then Galton had and we have not been told that Galton was denied anything more than the spider drive.

The spider drive and the stealth tech the spiders have (in addition to ‘no wedge’) are apparently completely separate systems, they are just deployed together. I strongly suspect they do not have to be deployed together.

kzt wrote:The spider drive and the stealth tech the spiders have (in addition to ‘no wedge’) are apparently completely separate systems, they are just deployed together. I strongly suspect they do not have to be deployed together.

I completely agree.

tlb wrote:

kzt wrote:The spider drive and the stealth tech the spiders have (in addition to ‘no wedge’) are apparently completely separate systems, they are just deployed together. I strongly suspect they do not have to be deployed together.

I completely agree.

Also, all the statements made about Manty and Malign stealth were offhand statements made in late 1921pd concerning what the Malign knew about Manty stealth in late 1920 or early 1921 during trials. That does not mean that Manty stealth was actually at that level in late 1921, either in a researched or deployed state, but whatever the Malign had found.

Remember, the python lump had not launched before the OB strike team left, and the vast majority of the ships fielded by Manticore and Grayson were first war builds, interwar EDM builds, and early 2nd war repeat tranche builds - i.e. older designs with older technology that had patchy upgrades. For example, older ships, like Star Knights or Sag-As never got upgrades to Bow Walls or similiar tech - some upgrades were just too expensive and would require too many systems to be overhauled on a ship to be cost effective. Even a Sag-B probably never got all the goodies of a Sag-C - and some SAG-Cs even had different Tech (Later flights of the Sag-C had 12 emitter pdlcs, where the first 2 flights had 8 emitter pdlcs. These older designs were the ships on the front line of the war (Prior to early 1921) which could be observed in action - not the fresh new designs, just launched and working up in back areas. Point being, the Malign was (on average) observing older ships, bearing older technology or with limited upgrades when those statements were made, which probably did not represent the state of the art of the advanced ships actually launched in 1921 or early 1922.

It is now 1924 - The best minds of 5+ nations have poured over the data collected in the 1922 Yawatta Strike and whatever details Simoes was able to give. Which is not to say the GA has a great knowledge about what spider and the stealth systems the Malign have, but they did find traces which could be analyzed, so are in a better place to identify it in 1924.

The Manties were steadily improving their stealth systems, as were the Amdermani and the Havenites - along with the perloined SLN research databanks, what levels of stealth/ECM have the GA developed and deployed in 1924, and (while rummaging through the ruins of Galton) what will they have deployed in the near future?

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Could you point me to the passage you posted about the spider drive captain again please?

In my browser it it is on the previous page of this thread (actually two pages back now, since this is on a new page); the next post after you use the phrase "MA tech - I have been long proposing - can get inside your underwear with you" and somewhat before you say "I have an ongoing disagreement about that 1 light-second". The text comes from chapter 9 of Mission of Honor.

A busy star system is not going to chase down every heat source. Might as well complain that they did not catch the bombs that were shipped to each orbital. The statement about the Silver Bullets was made, not because I do not think they were stealthy, but because you claimed this PROVED that the Malign tech was better in all respects. I will grant that is true in the case of spider drive, but the GA stealth was better then Galton had and we have not been told that Galton was denied anything more than the spider drive.

And the bit about waste heat, with respect to the Ghost-class sneaking through the Yeltsin system, was from earlier in that same chapter

Mission of Honor Ch. 9 wrote:It wasn’t perfect, of course. The system’s greatest weakness was that it couldn’t give complete coverage. Like any stealth system, it still had to deal with things like waste heat, for example. Current technology could recapture and use an enormous percentage of that heat, but not all of it, and what they couldn’t capture still had to go somewhere. And, like other navies’ stealth systems, the MAN’s dealt with that by radiating that heat away from known enemy sensors. Modern stealth fields could do a lot to minimize even heat signatures, but nothing could completely eliminate them, and stealth fields themselves were detectable at extremely short ranges, so any ship remained vulnerable to detection by a sufficiently sensitive sensor on exactly the right (or wrong) bearing.
[snip]
However difficult a sensor target they might be for Bogey Two’s shipboard systems, the rules would change abruptly if the Grayson cruiser decided to deploy her own recon platforms. If she were to do that, and if the platforms got a good, close-range look at the aspect Apparition was keeping turned away from their mothership, the chance of detection went from abysmally low to terrifyingly high in very short order. Which meant what Sung was really doing was betting that the odds of the Grayson’s choosing to deploy recon platforms were lower than the odds of her shipboard systems detecting the spider’s activation flare if he maneuvered to avoid her.

So I think it's pretty clear that a spider ship trying to sneak inside the RD shell around a GA fleet is just asking to be detected. Once it's inside the globe of very stealthy in their own right drones it has all to good a chance to have its radiated waste heat be seeing by a drone (or drones) that are now further out that it is.

As for eliminating those drones first -- sure, given weeks to play with the Silver Bullet extreme endurance graser torps were able to eventually track down the location of orbiting Mycroft control platforms by their occasionally FTL transmissions. But there's no evidence that the MAlign can quickly track down (and then eliminate) any significant number of Ghost Rider drones that are maneuvering around a (probably maneuvering itself) fleet. So I don't think they can count on stripping away the Fleet's early warning in order to try to sneak into energy range.



And even if they can; unless they killed the entire fleet instantly a surprise energy range ambush is all to likely to end up with the Spider ship dead as well. Firing off its energy weapons reveals its position and any ships that didn't die in the first couple seconds will have time to fire back with their energy weapons, missiles, or Vipers/CMs -- and without wedge or sidewall to protect them the spider is more vulnerable to those than its targets are

Hang back and use your graser torp to snipe, or leave pods of Cataphracts as minefields. Act like a reasonable stealthy submarine, and not the insane big-gun "cruiser" subs of the late WWI and early interwar period. Fight with stealth, torpedoes, and mines -- don't engage in gun fights where you might get shot in return (no mater how effective you might be at sneaking into gun range in the first place)

Jonathan_S wrote:*

You have actually included a subset of the text that I posted. Note that we both did the snip for exactly the same lines.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Could you point me to the passage you posted about the spider drive captain again please?

In my browser it it is on the previous page of this thread (actually two pages back now, since this is on a new page); the next post after you use the phrase "MA tech - I have been long proposing - can get inside your underwear with you" and somewhat before you say "I have an ongoing disagreement about that 1 light-second". The text comes from chapter 9 of Mission of Honor.

A busy star system is not going to chase down every heat source. Might as well complain that they did not catch the bombs that were shipped to each orbital. The statement about the Silver Bullets was made, not because I do not think they were stealthy, but because you claimed this PROVED that the Malign tech was better in all respects. I will grant that is true in the case of spider drive, but the GA stealth was better then Galton had and we have not been told that Galton was denied anything more than the spider drive.

I did not say that. I said specifically, that MA stealth is a cut above. Same as I have always been saying. As I have said before, the goal of any navy is to hide a warship, not hide a wedge. And when it comes to hiding a warship the MA wins, hands down. And since their stealth is a cut above, it is logical to think their sensors are as well. Especially considering how paranoid they should be about someone defecting with a Ghost or LD.

At any rate, I asked you for the post you were referring to because I thought I had missed it because it was in another thread. I had already consumed the one you were referring to the first time. I didn't think you were referring to that post, because it is specifically discussing the Ghosts. Not the LD. The Ghosts were a rushed testbed as much as Fearless was. I don't expect the Ghost stealth to be as effective as an LD.

Pay attention to the part of your post which goes into detail how the smart paint of the Ghosts goes way beyond the capabilities of any other smart paint. In that same manner, I expect the LD's stealth to be more effective than the Ghosts.

@tlb, kzt. I also agree that the stealth systems are separate. Certainly since they were developed at different times. The smart paint is relatively new. I only asked about the stealth of an LD while it is sitting still, because an LD just might produce little or NO heat while it is immobile. We don't know. That would simply be a wave of the author's hand.

I truly do not believe that the Achilles heel of an LD is going to be waste heat. I just don't. Waste heat has never truly been a problem in the HV. I don't think the author would develop such stealthy tech and give it such a silly flaw. I just don't.

Your post also says the stealth is at risk at EXTREMELY close ranges. I can accept that. We just differ on what extremely means. I think it means an RD has to literally fly into an LD's "jet wash".

If GR drones can read the letters on the hull, then I expect MA drones to be able to change the lettering. LOL Too much? Oh well, you get the point.

This is very rushed. I had planned a much more indepth post, but, well, life.

tlb wrote:A busy star system is not going to chase down every heat source. Might as well complain that they did not catch the bombs that were shipped to each orbital. The statement about the Silver Bullets was made, not because I do not think they were stealthy, but because you claimed this PROVED that the Malign tech was better in all respects. I will grant that is true in the case of spider drive, but the GA stealth was better then Galton had and we have not been told that Galton was denied anything more than the spider drive.

penny wrote:I did not say that. I said specifically, that MA stealth is a cut above. Same as I have always been saying. As I have said before, the goal of any navy is to hide a warship, not hide a wedge. And when it comes to hiding a warship the MA wins, hands down. And since their stealth is a cut above, it is logical to think their sensors are as well. Especially considering how paranoid they should be about someone defecting with a Ghost or LD.

At any rate, I asked you for the post you were referring to because I thought I had missed it because it was in another thread. I had already consumed the one you were referring to the first time. I didn't think you were referring to that post, because it is specifically discussing the Ghosts. Not the LD. The Ghosts were a rushed testbed as much as Fearless was. I don't expect the Ghost stealth to be as effective as an LD.

Of course we have not heard from the captain of an LD, because they were still being built the last we heard. But it does not matter, because the point was being made about hiding the heat signature and that problem will not be different; if anything we would expect an LD to have to hide more heat. You made the following statement which the text proves is absolutely wrong:

penny wrote:I think we need to abandon the waste heat problem. It just does not exist as a problem in the HV as a variable that affects detection. As far as the LD goes, it could turn out that the Spider drive handles waste heat even better.

As for the stealth: what I was writing with the Silver Bullet was because you were saying they proved Malign stealth was better and that is wrong. Now you may look at the text posted in this thread and say this is beyond what the GA can do and so their sensors must be better also. Any statement about sensors simply does not follow. The whole smart paint thing is something that can be done today with flat panel displays. We simply do not know what the full capabilities are of everything possessed by the GA.

penny wrote:At any rate, I asked you for the post you were referring to because I thought I had missed it because it was in another thread. I had already consumed the one you were referring to the first time. I didn't think you were referring to that post, because it is specifically discussing the Ghosts. Not the LD. The Ghosts were a rushed testbed as much as Fearless was. I don't expect the Ghost stealth to be as effective as an LD.

Correction - it was the Sharks were the testbed, then unexpectedly pushed into a combat role. Though there's no evidence that their stealth design was rushed - after all one of the things they'd be testbedding would be the stealth technology to be incorporated into the combat units. They'd make pretty crappy test platforms if their stealth was sub-par -- the MAlign needed that real world sensor information on the actual strengths and weaknesses of their stealth systems in order to hope to devise appropriate tactics for best utilizing it.
Still, there's at least room to argue that the MAlign might have learned enough from that real-world testing to improve the stealth fits of the follow-on ship designs in some way that wasn't practical to retrofit back into the existing Sharks; leaving the Sharks a somewhat inferior stealth capability. (Though there's no evidence provided either way)


But, in any case, the Ghosts were NOT a testbed.

As one of those follow-on designs The Ghost-class had always been designed to scout for, and when necessary provide forward fire control (via deploying stealthy fire control relays) for the Lenny Dets. So, as the ships that would be skulking around behind enemy lines the longest, they'd have the very best stealth the MAlign could cram into them. And even so they're worried about recon drones that manage to get to their rear...

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:At any rate, I asked you for the post you were referring to because I thought I had missed it because it was in another thread. I had already consumed the one you were referring to the first time. I didn't think you were referring to that post, because it is specifically discussing the Ghosts. Not the LD. The Ghosts were a rushed testbed as much as Fearless was. I don't expect the Ghost stealth to be as effective as an LD.

Correction - it was the Sharks were the testbed, then unexpectedly pushed into a combat role. Though there's no evidence that their stealth design was rushed - after all one of the things they'd be testbedding would be the stealth technology to be incorporated into the combat units. They'd make pretty crappy test platforms if their stealth was sub-par -- the MAlign needed that real world sensor information on the actual strengths and weaknesses of their stealth systems in order to hope to devise appropriate tactics for best utilizing it.
Still, there's at least room to argue that the MAlign might have learned enough from that real-world testing to improve the stealth fits of the follow-on ship designs in some way that wasn't practical to retrofit back into the existing Sharks; leaving the Sharks a somewhat inferior stealth capability. (Though there's no evidence provided either way)


But, in any case, the Ghosts were NOT a testbed.

As one of those follow-on designs The Ghost-class had always been designed to scout for, and when necessary provide forward fire control (via deploying stealthy fire control relays) for the Lenny Dets. So, as the ships that would be skulking around behind enemy lines the longest, they'd have the very best stealth the MAlign could cram into them. And even so they're worried about recon drones that manage to get to their rear...

Ok! I got it the other way around. I simply remember the jury-rigged deployment arm to launch the torps, and not a launch tube that I fully expect the LD to have.

But I still expect that the LD will showcase much better stealth.

Anyway, glad you cleared that up. Because I always assumed that an LD might utilize screening elements. Invisible screening elements for invisible ships. Dunno about you, but I call that loose bowels hitting the turbo oscillator.