The Alamo Contingency has already failed

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:I could be misremembering this. But your own post goes into detail about the upgraded smart paint of the Ghosts.

And RFC didn't drop us the little snippet about smart paint that caused a tizzy in the forum until well after Oyster Bay.

As I understand it, ALL ships, even GA ships, have some form of smart paint. No?

The Mission of Honor does talk just about Ghosts having the upgraded stealth; but it certainly doesn't say the Sharks lack it. And that text is in the context of the captain of a Ghost ruminating about its capabilities -- he'd have no particular reason to be explicit, in his own mind, about whether or not that upgrade was unique to the Ghosts (among the MAlign spider ships) - the key thing to him at that time is what capabilities the ship he's aboard has.



But yes, basically all modern warships have some degree of smart paint.

House of Steel even mentions how Manticore used it as part of their efforts to initially disguise the specifications of the then brand new Star Knight-class heavy cruisers. (Though admittedly HoS was released years after Mission of Honor)

War of Honor (2 mainline books, and 8 years, before Mission of Honor and this Ghost stealth excerpt) was the first mention I can find that specifically used the term "smart paint" -- discussing Bachfisch's armed freighters in Silesia. But it goes on the say:
"The "paint" used by the RMN and most other navies was liberally laced with nanotech and reactive pigments which allowed it to be programmed and altered, essentially without limit, at will. Unfortunately, as McKeon had just suggested, that was of strictly limited utility for a warship."

Jonathan, if I am not mistaken, RFC didn't drop the bomb of a snippet on us about upgraded smart paint until the snippet season of Uncompromising, I think. Maybe TEiF.

Standard paint simply disguises a ship. It doesn't hide it. We were first exposed to stealth smart paint when it was hiding some small ship/complex on planet. Incidentally, that scene is partly responsible for my insistence of MA stealth allowing access to your underwear.

A very large complex was hiding on planet from regular search ships flying overhead. They were not close enough. The smart paint was able to hide a very large object on planet as close as a ship would come in a flyby????

Lest I am misremembering it. I am searching for the passage in TEiF.

penny wrote:Jonathan, if I am not mistaken, RFC didn't drop the bomb of a snippet on us about upgraded smart paint until the snippet season of Uncompromising, I think. Maybe TEiF.

Standard paint simply disguises a ship. It doesn't hide it. We were first exposed to stealth smart paint when it was hiding some small ship/complex on planet. Incidentally, that scene is partly responsible for my insistence of MA stealth allowing access to your underwear.

A very large complex was hiding on planet from regular search ships flying overhead. They were not close enough. The smart paint was able to hide a very large object on planet as close as a ship would come in a flyby????

Lest I am misremembering it. I am searching for the passage in TEiF.

Please do find and report; because the only place where I remember there is hiding from an overhead search is in The Service of the Sword, where people are hiding from pirates under thermal blankets.

On Cerebus the stolen shuttles are hidden under camouflage netting.

Are you referring to the buried complex on the island in a park on Mesa where Detweiler lived? The site of one of the unexplained nuclear explosions.

There have a couple of other buried places: the Peeps hideout and also the drug lab in OBS and the marine drop on the terrorist camp in The Shadow of Saganami (I believe).

1) Submarines...........up through and during much of WW II submarines were warships that could submerge to mostly sneak in and attack targets or get out of sight of faster ships that wanted to kill them. They were much slower submerged....MUCH SLOWER. To get anywhere in a hurry they needed to be on the surface. Sure, part of the speed difference was the electric motors when used underwater are quieter but they had to push the entire forward surface area of the hull not just the lower part of the hull as with a surface ship.
It wasn't till much later that - given advantages like nuclear power plants (which are are way more quiet than diesel engines) mean you don't have to surface to recharge batteries, and the ships were DESIGNED to operate at their best speeds fully submerged.

2) The Ghost slinking around Grayson. The Ghost was inside the system and configured its orientation to keep its thermal exhaust system away from any known sensor that might have been looking for heat. The Grayson warship was a very unpleasant unexpected surprise as the Ghost wasn't expecting anything to be going though that area. Perhaps training but that ship was not where anyone would expect to find any ship, let alone a warship....and The Ghost is already will inside the Grason sensor net, it's IN THE SYSTEM. The captain was worried because if the ship had deployed it's recon drones (They have a reason to be wanting to avoid any close brush with a Ghost Rider) and one of the drone shell overfly the Ghotst on the side that is oriented away from all expected sensors, the drone's probable detecting that heat (in a place it can't be) is going to feed that information (you know- relative range, bearing and any rate of movement) to the mother ship which could quite reasonably start blasting away at the heat source it can't see in a place nothing should be with missiles etc. And reporting /forwarding ALL the information back to the Grayson military sensor net and its system command headquarters. You know,......this is GNS WhatyoumayCallit with a Zulu Broadcast, , we have an invisible heat source radiating omnidirectionaly away from any of the insisted sensor nodes and moving at XXXXXX kph (stick in the approbate course etc).This is a RD contact which Does Not Register on any Sensor we have including visual......We are going to Test IT with a volley of missiles and see if it lights up. Requesting back up, am launching a double spread of RDs to shadow the source if it survives the missiles.

3) The Silver Bullet vehicle(s) are as stealthy as the MA can make then considering they are essentially two heavy cargo pods spliced together. Dropped from an incoming commercial freighter (speed was already relatively low) and using either RD stealthy propulsion of spyder drive, and using solar panels to collect energy to keep the system running. They are NOT broadcasting, they are listening for gravametric pulses to build a picture of command nodes communicating with stealthed missile pods.
The freighter was already well inside the system sensor net and nobody is looking for "things falling off freighters" which are not showing a wedge.

Brigade XO wrote:1) Submarines...........up through and during much of WW II submarines were warships that could submerge to mostly sneak in and attack targets or get out of sight of faster ships that wanted to kill them. They were much slower submerged....MUCH SLOWER. To get anywhere in a hurry they needed to be on the surface. Sure, part of the speed difference was the electric motors when used underwater are quieter but they had to push the entire forward surface area of the hull not just the lower part of the hull as with a surface ship.
It wasn't till much later that - given advantages like nuclear power plants (which are are way more quiet than diesel engines) mean you don't have to surface to recharge batteries, and the ships were DESIGNED to operate at their best speeds fully submerged.

Though part of that is hull form.
Up until basically the 50s submarines were all designed with hulls optimized for efficiency on the surface, which meant they were sub-optimal for submerged speed. Their cylindrical pressure hull was enclosed within a more v-shaped hydrodynamic hull (with fuel, ballast tanks, and the like filling much of the space between the two)

A hull optimized for underwater performance is cylindrical or teardrop shaped, like modern nuclear and diesel electric subs have, but it's much less hydrodynamically efficient when running on the surface (and tends to roll uncomfortably)

Now, the subs of the world wars could have used underwater optimized hull shapes -- but since the limits of battery technology of the time meant they has to use air breathing propulsion most of the time that dictated that they also spend most of their time on the surface. (At least until the clever Dutch invented the snorkel to allow you to run diesels at periscope depth -- tech the Nazi's promptly stole after they invaded) So it make a fair degree of sense to optimize the hull of those subs for the conditions they spent the most of their time in. And that decision was further reinforces because the relatively weak batteries of the time simply couldn't store enough energy to let you run submerged at high speed for any length of time even if you had a hull optimized for it - so might as well lean into the high-speed/long-range surfaced and low-speed/short-ranged submerged dichotomy with your hull design.

Nuclear obviously changed things as so it made sense to go to an underwater optimized hull. And increasing threats to surfaced subs combined with improvements in batteries, and the snorkel, drove the post-war diesel electric submarines to do the same.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Jonathan, if I am not mistaken, RFC didn't drop the bomb of a snippet on us about upgraded smart paint until the snippet season of Uncompromising, I think. Maybe TEiF.

Standard paint simply disguises a ship. It doesn't hide it. We were first exposed to stealth smart paint when it was hiding some small ship/complex on planet. Incidentally, that scene is partly responsible for my insistence of MA stealth allowing access to your underwear.

A very large complex was hiding on planet from regular search ships flying overhead. They were not close enough. The smart paint was able to hide a very large object on planet as close as a ship would come in a flyby????

Lest I am misremembering it. I am searching for the passage in TEiF.

Please do find and report; because the only place where I remember there is hiding from an overhead search is in The Service of the Sword, where people are hiding from pirates under thermal blankets.

On Cerebus the stolen shuttles are hidden under camouflage netting.

Are you referring to the buried complex on the island in a park on Mesa where Detweiler lived? The site of one of the unexplained nuclear explosions.

There have a couple of other buried places: the Peeps hideout and also the drug lab in OBS and the marine drop on the terrorist camp in The Shadow of Saganami (I believe).

Trying hard to find it but no luck. I do not have searchable text. The drawback of dead tree versions. But I have always trusted my search professionals. You guys are amazing.

I could be wrong, but I am almost certain. Almost certain isn't 100% and I have been wrong a time or two. Make that a time and a half. LOL

Mind posting a bit about the netting? Anywho, I recall seeing it in an RFC post. A couple of humor posts came from it.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:I am going to have to disagree here. You know how I feel about that subject from another thread. You just need to change one word. Change "different" to "varying". LDs should be used in varying roles. Depending on the mission, that should include infiltrating deep into enemy territory. Taking risks. Operating behind enemy lines. This is why I decry a waste-heat limited LD that has to loiter on the edge of a system throwing long range rocks like a coward.

"AT ALL COSTS, destroy that bridge! Take out that port!"

I really disagree here. They will not risk any of their stealth vehicles where said vehicle may be captured or even rendered incapable of totally destroying itself. Letting their stealth technology and/or the spider drive fall into GA hands is not going to be an acceptable cost.

Unless they're either desperate (close to losing) or so assured of victory soon that the loss of the strategic advantage won't hurt their plans. Since we know the latter won't happen, I don't think we see such extremely risky missions until the last book, if at all.

I just can't agree with that.

You yourself pointed out, rightfully so, that a lot of their tech may not get to be used but once. Sonja and Shannon both live in the garage.

Again, had the MA not have prematurely ejac— err, revealed themselves and their capabilities with Oyster Bay and saved themselves until an opening attack across the galaxy, the HV would have become the Detverse. Much like the RMN prematurely showcased Apollo.

But t don't think it is too late to do a lot of damage and almost win. But they have to use the element of a surprise main attack and the fact that the RMN will be completely oblivious and not even at DefCon.

They can't afford to be timid if it is going to be a short victorious war. The MA needs short! They cannot launch a campaign of attrition by destroying infrastructure from the edge of the system until someone gets a read on their tech.

An LD can't be captured if the enemy is dead.

I just remembered an important detail that led me to a thread discussing it. It refers to it as smart cloth.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10862&p=305479&hilit=Smart+skin#p305479

Help any?

penny wrote:Mind posting a bit about the netting? Anywho, I recall seeing it in an RFC post. A couple of humor posts came from it.

The book doesn't say much.

Echoes of Honor - Ch. 8 wrote:As it was, the individual trees which supported the uppermost layer of the overhead canopy were just far enough apart that the pilots had been able to nudge their way between the thick trunks without actually knocking them over. And once the shuttles were down, the cammo netting which had been part of their standard supplies, coupled with the jungle's vines, lianas, fronds, leaves, branches, and tree trunks had made concealing them a straightforward task. The sheer grunt labor involved in spreading the nets with only seventeen sets of hands and just four portable grav lifters available for the job had been daunting, but the alternative had been a great motivator. They'd all had more than enough of the Office of State Security's hospitality.

Echoes of Honor - Ch. 10-11 wrote:"All right, people," she said as the other shuttle finally settled and its turbines died. "We're going to have to work faster than we'd expected to get the nets up. Senior Chief O'Jorgenson?"
"Yes, Ma'am?" Senior Chief Tamara O'Jorgenson was a fellow Sphinxian who had been a senior environmental tech aboard Prince Adrian but also happened to be a fully qualified small craft gunner.
"You'll man the dorsal turret while we get squared away, Senior Chief," Honor said.
"Aye, Ma'am."
"Very well, then." Honor hit the release on her own straps and stood. "Let's be about it, people."

Chapter Eleven
It was almost dawn before they had the nets in place once more, and Honor was more nervous about the quality of their camouflage than she cared to show. The climate was definitely drier here, and the soil seemed to be less rich. There was far less undergrowth than the ferociously fecund four-canopy jungle in which they had originally landed had offered, and the trees, for the most part, tended to be smaller. It was much harder to snuggle the shuttles in under them, and there were fewer natural vines and lianas to complement the cammo nets. She knew McKeon was as unhappy about the situation as she was, and they'd already made plans for most of their people to spend the coming night weaving more natural elements into the nets, but for now they'd just have to hope the concealment was good enough.

and

Echoes of Honor - Ch. 23 wrote:"Aye, Sir. Everything looks good back here," Horace Harkness replied crisply, and Tremaine glanced out the side window of his cockpit. Geraldine Metcalf and Sarah DuChene had Shuttle Two, with Master Chief Ascher as their flight engineer, but there'd never been any doubt in Tremaine's mind who would draw Shuttle One for Operation Lunch Basket. Now he watched as Solomon Marchant and Anson Lethridge shouted orders to the "ground crew." Muscles strained as the carefully prepared cammo nettings were yanked off, and then the ground crews were streaming aboard Shuttle One.
"Nets clear, Sir," Harkness reported. "Hatches sealing now. Ready when you are."

penny wrote:A very large complex was hiding on planet from regular search ships flying overhead. They were not close enough. The smart paint was able to hide a very large object on planet as close as a ship would come in a flyby????

Lest I am misremembering it. I am searching for the passage in TEiF.

tlb wrote:On Cerebus the stolen shuttles are hidden under camouflage netting.

Are you referring to the buried complex on the island in a park on Mesa where Detweiler lived? The site of one of the unexplained nuclear explosions.

penny wrote:Mind posting a bit about the netting? Anywho, I recall seeing it in an RFC post. A couple of humor posts came from it.

So you are talking about Detweiler's hidden on the island in a nature preserve. That was in UH, well after MoH and probably is closer to most nation's smart paint.

The netting is mentioned at the start of chapter 11 in Echoes of Honor, note that this is Peeps' issued material:

It was almost dawn before they had the nets in place once more, and Honor was more nervous about the quality of their camouflage than she cared to show. The climate was definitely drier here, and the soil seemed to be less rich. There was far less undergrowth than the ferociously fecund four-canopy jungle in which they had originally landed had offered, and the trees, for the most part, tended to be smaller. It was much harder to snuggle the shuttles in under them, and there were fewer natural vines and lianas to complement the cammo nets. She knew McKeon was as unhappy about the situation as she was, and they'd already made plans for most of their people to spend the coming night weaving more natural elements into the nets, but for now they'd just have to hope the concealment was good enough.

penny wrote:I just remembered an important detail that led me to a thread discussing it. It refers to it as smart cloth.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10862&p=305479&hilit=Smart+skin#p305479

Help any?

Not really. There were zero hits for "smart cloth", or "smart-cloth", 3 for "smart skin", and only 1 for "smart-skin"

Uncompromising Honor uses "smart skin" twice.
* once in talking about how residence towers use it to display "slowly changed color or portrayed works of art or landscapes from elsewhere in the Manticore Binary System"
* once talking about a shooting range and the "B7 Silhouette" Honor was using for target practice where the target silhouette used smart skin to highlight the very small holes the pulser made (presumably so you could actually see where you were hitting)

A Call to Vengence uses "smart skin" once.
* "[One of Axlerod's ships] Shrike, with its wedge down and its smart skin rigged for full stealth, was still coasting undetected through the Walther system."
And uses "smart-skin" once.
* "[Axlerod's] freighters’ sensor suites were as sophisticated as their weapons, smart-skins, and ECM equipment"