The Two General's Problem

penny wrote:if the spider drive enables them to get into hyper quicker, then evading return fire and living to fight another day would be the worthwhile tactic.

The speed of getting into hyperspace depends solely on the cycle time of the hyperspace generator, which we know takes longer the larger the object making the transition.

penny wrote:I think you are understimating the value of the tactic. If forts and LDs and space stations are emplaced outside the limit then they are in position to fire upon anything that hypers in. And if the spider drive enables them to get into hyper quicker, then evading return fire and living to fight another day would be the worthwhile tactic.

Well anything that hyper in nearby. Space is vast.

Take a star with a 22 LM hyper limit (basically the area inside the orbit of Mars). That hyper limit encompasses about 44,600 cubic light minutes -- no one fort is going to easily dominate that whole area. And even an Apollo system defense missile (which can engage over that range given sufficient Mycroft relays) will take almost 32 minutes to cover 22 LM (a normal Apollo missile, with only 3 drives, would take almost 44 minutes to go that same distance)

So that's huge. Now consider only the area another 22 LM out from the hyper limit -- basically to the outer edge of Jupiter's orbit. So still well inside the star system. That doubling of radius adds another roughly 312,200 cubic light minutes. 7x additional area.

Odds are excellent that if you parked stations or forts out beyond the hyper limit that they still wouldn't be anywhere near weapons range of someone emerging from hyper. There's just too much area out there so the odds of emerging close enough to a fort are vanishingly low.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:if the spider drive enables them to get into hyper quicker, then evading return fire and living to fight another day would be the worthwhile tactic.

The speed of getting into hyperspace depends solely on the cycle time of the hyperspace generator, which we know takes longer the larger the object making the transition.

Yep. Though RFC has said little enough about the streak drive that there's room for him to decide that its cycle time is the same as any other hyper generator, or that for a given size it cycles differently (either faster or slower) than any other hyper generator. So the spider drive should provide no help, the streak drive might provide a help, a hinderance, or neither.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see

Jonathan_S wrote:Well anything that hyper in nearby. Space is vast.

Take a star with a 22 LM hyper limit (basically the area inside the orbit of Mars). That hyper limit encompasses about 44,600 cubic light minutes -- no one fort is going to easily dominate that whole area. And even an Apollo system defense missile (which can engage over that range given sufficient Mycroft relays) will take almost 32 minutes to cover 22 LM (a normal Apollo missile, with only 3 drives, would take almost 44 minutes to go that same distance)

So that's huge. Now consider only the area another 22 LM out from the hyper limit -- basically to the outer edge of Jupiter's orbit. So still well inside the star system. That doubling of radius adds another roughly 312,200 cubic light minutes. 7x additional area.

Odds are excellent that if you parked stations or forts out beyond the hyper limit that they still wouldn't be anywhere near weapons range of someone emerging from hyper. There's just too much area out there so the odds of emerging close enough to a fort are vanishingly low.

But there are few enough cases where the incoming fleet did not choose to arrive close to the point directly out from the intended target. An exception was the RHN fleet that came from the polar north (?) of the system protected by Manticore ships; but that system did not have a gravitic array to give warning.

Honor's fleet at the Sol System and at Galton could have been hurt if the pods had already been emplaced outward from the expected arrival spot. However the drones launched from the exploratory ship might then have seen them at Galton, forcing her into a different approach.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Well anything that hyper in nearby. Space is vast.

Take a star with a 22 LM hyper limit (basically the area inside the orbit of Mars). That hyper limit encompasses about 44,600 cubic light minutes -- no one fort is going to easily dominate that whole area. And even an Apollo system defense missile (which can engage over that range given sufficient Mycroft relays) will take almost 32 minutes to cover 22 LM (a normal Apollo missile, with only 3 drives, would take almost 44 minutes to go that same distance)

So that's huge. Now consider only the area another 22 LM out from the hyper limit -- basically to the outer edge of Jupiter's orbit. So still well inside the star system. That doubling of radius adds another roughly 312,200 cubic light minutes. 7x additional area.

Odds are excellent that if you parked stations or forts out beyond the hyper limit that they still wouldn't be anywhere near weapons range of someone emerging from hyper. There's just too much area out there so the odds of emerging close enough to a fort are vanishingly low.

But there are few enough cases where the incoming fleet did not choose to arrive close to the point directly out from the intended target. An exception was the RHN fleet that came from the polar north (?) of the system protected by Manticore ships; but that system did not have a gravitic array to give warning.

Honor's fleet at the Sol System and at Galton could have been hurt if the pods had already been emplaced outward from the expected arrival spot. However the drones launched from the exploratory ship might then have seen them at Galton, forcing her into a different approach.

True. If there are likely emergence spots then you can arrange to cover those with defenses.

But unlike Sol, where Honor emerged within her missile range of the Reserves at Ganymede, the Darius system is an unknown. There isn't any reason for someone who just found it to pick one emergence point over another -- since they don't know the system's layout. Still, the first ships in should be scouts -- and while they'd work out the layout of the system, they should also be scouting potential emergence zones to attempt to avoid the fleet emerging into ambushes. And so in order to trap a GA fleet the Darius defenders would need to work out where that fleet was likely to emerge, place defenses to cover it, and then hide all those defenses from the scouts that should proceed the fleet.

LennyDets and Sharks might be able to hide from scouts at missile range around an emergence point -- I doubt forts can.
(And we don't know that Darius has forts to spare -- Galton was supposed to be the military-industrial society. Darius was supposed to be far less militarized and so logically should have issues keeping up that appearance if it diverted too much of its economy into its military)

Jonathan_S wrote:But unlike Sol, where Honor emerged within her missile range of the Reserves at Ganymede, the Darius system is an unknown. There isn't any reason for someone who just found it to pick one emergence point over another -- since they don't know the system's layout. Still, the first ships in should be scouts -- and while they'd work out the layout of the system, they should also be scouting potential emergence zones to attempt to avoid the fleet emerging into ambushes. And so in order to trap a GA fleet the Darius defenders would need to work out where that fleet was likely to emerge, place defenses to cover it, and then hide all those defenses from the scouts that should proceed the fleet.

LennyDets and Sharks might be able to hide from scouts at missile range around an emergence point -- I doubt forts can.
(And we don't know that Darius has forts to spare -- Galton was supposed to be the military-industrial society. Darius was supposed to be far less militarized and so logically should have issues keeping up that appearance if it diverted too much of its economy into its military)

And unless there's advanced warning of the scouting attempt, light-speed lag implies that anything that wasn't under stealth when the scout or drones arrived will have been seen. The other option is that the Darius defenders are always running everything under stealth, which is blatantly unlikely because of the wear-and-tear on equipment. We also know they need to radiate waste heat into a specific direction, which means they can't guarantee not being seen unless they know where the scouts are.

Now, it's not impossible they know a scouting will happen, if they have remaining intel assets embedded in to the GA militaries, and if they can somehow get word to Darius quicker than those forces. Agents are actually unlikely now, because of the treecat-led purge. Getting word quickly actually is, with both the streak drive and access to the Felix junction, which is denied the GA (unless of course that has been found and blockaded).

But the window of arrival is fairly large and they'd need to retain stealth basically forever from this point. I'd say keeping entire large infrastructure and ships in stealth forever is not going to happen. I've argued before they need resupply and ships need to come to port for rest and refit. Keeping those in stealth would imply keeping the ports in stealth and using stealth cargo ships to resupply forts, which got their supplies from stealth food producing units and stealth industrial nodes, which in turn are supplied by stealth mining units that mine asteroids without leaving a trace.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:if the spider drive enables them to get into hyper quicker, then evading return fire and living to fight another day would be the worthwhile tactic.

The speed of getting into hyperspace depends solely on the cycle time of the hyperspace generator, which we know takes longer the larger the object making the transition.

Jonathan_! wrote:Yep. Though RFC has said little enough about the streak drive that there's room for him to decide that its cycle time is the same as any other hyper generator, or that for a given size it cycles differently (either faster or slower) than any other hyper generator. So the spider drive should provide no help, the streak drive might provide a help, a hinderance, or neither.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see

Ditto on the possibilities of the cycle time of a streak drive's hyper generator.

But I was building upon one of my old suggestions - whether it holds water or not - that likewise RFC can have it where the spider drive itself can work to increase the cycle time of the hyper generator. The spider drive latches onto the hyper wall and siphons energy. Perhaps that energy can power up the hyper generator quicker. The hyper wall might supply a different sort of energy that might enable fast charging or improve upon whatever is the bottleneck of the hyper generator.

Hyper wall → hyper generator. shrug

At any rate, between the spider drive or the streak drive or both in tandem, I personally am not willing to bank on previously accepted cycle times.

penny wrote:The spider drive latches onto the hyper wall and siphons energy. Perhaps that energy can power up the hyper generator quicker. The hyper wall might supply a different sort of energy that might enable fast charging or improve upon whatever is the bottleneck of the hyper generator.

The wedge does get energy from the wall, but the spider drive's connection is weaker (which is why it is much harder to detect) and there is NO indication that it gets energy from its tugs on the wall. So if energy from the wall could make the transition faster, then the wedge should already reap that benefit. The bottleneck in the hyper-generator cycle time is the size of the field that must be generated which increases with the mass of the object that makes the transition.

I am going to attempt a single ambitious post that will address the main points of several other posts.

Do understand that I am still banking on the Mad Wizard’s stroke of the pen and that a fair number of those planned 100 LDs will be complete. Enough to give the GA hell anyway.

If there are a fair number of LDs completed, why not forward deploy them? Forward deploying LDs in my book would mean deploying the bulk of them outside the hyper limit. And do note that I don’t think LDs will be in the habit of operating with their drives down. Even if their drives are down, I doubt they’d be detected unless the fleet hypers in on top of one of them.*

An LD with its drive down will simulate a hole in space; ordinarily impossible to detect. Like a sub, its emissions will be minimal. Silent running. Bringing up the spider drive might be instantaneous. We also shouldn’t become too wed to the MTBF of spider drives being anywhere near the bucket of “Cogswell cogs and Spacely sprockets" used by conventionsl warships; recognizing of course that the MTBF could be a lot worse. But also it could be much better. And replacing those parts for a spider drive could turn out to be much easier and faster, making the entire economics cheaper as a whole and saving on installation costs. The parts might even be much cheaper.

*As someone pointed out again, space is vast. The possibility of hypering in atop a fort or an LD operating outside the limit is slim, even with the lion's share of the projected 100 LDs complete. Especially if the MAN is methodical with their placement. But the MAN would want that possibility to be slim; however, they would still like the opportunity to fire upon anything that does manage to hyper in too close. Please don't count on the fleet zig-zagging outside the hyper limit.

Tactically, any LDs that are deployed outside the limit would want to be behind the enemy fleet after their transition. One, because traditionally subs stalk their prey. And because an enemy fleet hypering in isn’t going to be too concerned with wasting sensors on the space behind them. Sensors have to be directed at an LD if they’re going to have any hopes of detecting it. The MAN knows the enemy is going to proceed on the least time course for the edge of the limit to lob missiles. The GA fleet will be ignorant of the LDs pursuit at maximum military power.

Let’s proceed on to any forts deployed outside the limit. I’m not too sure they will be seen. The MAN is concerned with total stealth. We don’t know if there isn't an asteroid belt where a fort or a space station for that matter can hide inside. Or oh so close that sensors cannot get a good read. We also don’t know how effectively the smart cloth can help to hide a space station or fort at long ranges. We are also ignorant of any possibility of the smart cloth and its technology being even more effective on larger objects with a bigger power budget.

Note:
The MAN has limited range FTL capability. I have been toying with the application of deploying the necessary number of platforms outside the limit at the edge of the system that can sprint news of a hyper footprint much faster than the light speed emergence itself. Giving forts and LDs time to bring up their drives; if indeed spider drives can be brought up almost instantly.

I still think any scouts that hyper into Darius will be lucky to limp back home with anything but their compensators intact. How can a scout scout the invisible in the most paranoid system mankind has ever known; a system that has the most advanced stealth technology ever invented. You simply cannot scout what you cannot see. Your sensors must have time to spot what they can't see before you are spotted by an ultra paranoid sect who has surely emplaced... contingencies. Keep in mind that Galton was a misdirection of existing technology and culpability.

As far as delivering supplies to forts and space stations, why must a ship dock to do so? There can be a forward deployment system. The goods can be ejected towards the station/fort and caught by tractors.



- grammar police gave me a ticket -
.

Do note that the MAlign's FTL, from what we've seen, is closer to on par with what Honor had on her drones way, way, back in HotQ
(though not as compact).

So (relatively) short ranged, low bandwidth, and omnidirectional.

To reach ships hiding out beyond the hyper limit the FTL transmitter likely needs to be near or beyond the hyper limit itself -- and when those start transmitting everybody is going to know it and know exactly where the transmitter is.
So for decent coverage of any significant radius out beyond the hyper limit you probably need a lot of FTL transmitting stations. Not only do you need enough that the whole area of interest can receiver a transmission from at least one, the fact that they're dead obvious while transmitting means you really want quite a bit of redundancy in that coverage so killing as stations transmit, give away their location, and are destroyed you've got additional stations you can bring up to transmit the next message to that given area of space.


And with omnidirectional FTL the LDs won't be able to respond in the same way -- not without giving themselves away. So all the Darius command will be able to do is send information and very broad orders (since they won't have current information on where each LD is or what it's intending to do)

That's still a useful capability (for as long as it lasts) but far short of the uses RMN FTL can be put to.