The Two General's Problem

penny wrote: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 conventional 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.

penny wrote:From the GA's tactics at Galton the MAN knows that the GA's least time course to the edge of the limit to lob missiles is going to include an extended stay trying to resolve the unseen to plan for their attack. Loitering. Hours if not days. Plenty of time for the pursuing LDs to catch their prey.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:From the GA's tactics at Galton the MAN knows that the GA's least time course to the edge of the limit to lob missiles is going to include an extended stay trying to resolve the unseen to plan for their attack. Loitering. Hours if not days. Plenty of time for the pursuing LDs to catch their prey.

The way I read the book, the only delay was in getting the recon drones and the communication buoy into place. So an hour or two, but definitely not days, elapsed. Yes, that is time to shift things around.

Jonathan_S wrote: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.

penny wrote:From the GA's tactics at Galton the MAN knows that the GA's least time course to the edge of the limit to lob missiles is going to include an extended stay trying to resolve the unseen to plan for their attack. Loitering. Hours if not days. Plenty of time for the pursuing LDs to catch their prey.

tlb wrote:The way I read the book, the only delay was in getting the recon drones and the communication buoy into place. So an hour or two, but definitely not days, elapsed. Yes, that is time to shift things around.

penny wrote:It might take quite a bit longer this time. Total stealth.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote: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.

It is looking like a very good answer to the ? thread is that FTL and the mini power plant are the two most disconcerting technologies that can change hands. Those two would fill the holes in the MAN's tech. IINM, one of the Detweilers projected only a matter of time for the power plant breakthrough and their FTL is already off to the races.

At any rate, the MAN might be able to eke out more performance from the system if they are simply transmitting a single "byte".

Honor of the Queen wrote:there are certain fundamental limitations on the system. Most importantly, it takes time for the generator to produce each pulse without burning itself out, which places an insurmountable limit on the data transmission speed. At present, we can only manage a pulse repetition rate of about nine-point-five seconds. Obviously, it’s going to take us a while to transmit any complex messages at that rate.”
“That’s true,” Honor put in, “but what we propose to do is program the onboard computers to respond to the most likely threat parameters with simple three or four-pulse codes. They’ll identify the threat’s basic nature and approach in less than a minute. The drones can follow up with more detailed messages once we’ve started responding.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote: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.

It is looking like a very good answer to the ? thread is that FTL and the mini power plant are the two most disconcerting technologies that can change hands. Those two would fill the holes in the MAN's tech. IINM, one of the Detweilers projected only a matter of time for the power plant breakthrough and their FTL is already off to the races.

At any rate, the MAN might be able to eke out more performance from the system if they are simply transmitting a single "byte".

Jonathan_S wrote:Do note that transmitting a "byte" (presumably meaning 8 bits) is about twice as much data as Honor was using in her FTL drones during HotQ.

Honor of the Queen wrote:there are certain fundamental limitations on the system. Most importantly, it takes time for the generator to produce each pulse without burning itself out, which places an insurmountable limit on the data transmission speed. At present, we can only manage a pulse repetition rate of about nine-point-five seconds. Obviously, it’s going to take us a while to transmit any complex messages at that rate.”
“That’s true,” Honor put in, “but what we propose to do is program the onboard computers to respond to the most likely threat parameters with simple three or four-pulse codes. They’ll identify the threat’s basic nature and approach in less than a minute. The drones can follow up with more detailed messages once we’ve started responding.

And while we don't know the MAligns pulse rate, it would have taken Honor's drones 1.26 minutes to pulse a full "byte" of data.

That's a fair bit of time in which to localize that transmitter -- since, unlike Thunder of God, the RMN knows exactly what those "random" grav pulses are and why they're important, plus would have multiple platforms that would be receiving them (allowing triangulation, not just taking a single bearing)

Quantum communication uses quantum mechanics to transmit information securely and potentially faster than classical communication methods. It involves encoding information onto quantum states, like the polarization of photons, and transmitting them across a channel. Key advantages include the potential for unbreakable encryption and the possibility of faster data transfer speeds.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:

1. How it works:

• Quantum bits (qubits):

Quantum communication uses qubits, which can exist in a superposition of 0 and 1, unlike classical bits which are either 0 or 1.

• Quantum states:

Information is encoded into the quantum states of particles, such as photons, through techniques like polarization or frequency.

• Transmission:

These quantum states are transmitted over a quantum channel, which could be an optical fiber or a free-space link.

• Measurement:

At the receiver, the quantum state is measured to extract the encoded information.

2. Quantum key distribution (QKD):

• Secure encryption:
QKD is a prominent application of quantum communication, enabling secure key distribution for encrypting and decrypting messages.

• Eavesdropping detection:
Any attempt to eavesdrop on the quantum channel will disturb the quantum state, alerting the sender and receiver that the communication has been compromised.

• Provably secure:
QKD offers theoretically secure encryption, unlike classical cryptography which relies on the computational complexity of certain mathematical problems.

3. Other potential applications:

• Quantum teleportation:

The ability to transmit quantum states, potentially enabling long-distance quantum computation and networking.

• Quantum sensor networks:

Utilizing quantum properties for more precise and reliable sensing applications.

• Quantum internet:

Connecting quantum processors over long distances, enabling distributed quantum computation and communication.

4. Challenges and future directions:

• Distance limitations:

Quantum communication is currently limited by the distance over which quantum states can be transmitted without significant decoherence (loss of information).

• Decoherence:

Environmental noise can cause qubits to lose their quantum state, making them difficult to measure at the receiver.

• Quantum repeaters:

Research is focused on developing quantum repeaters to overcome distance limitations by creating "bridges" to extend communication ranges.

• Quantum network development:

Building and connecting local quantum networks to form a global quantum internet is a major goal of the field.

5. Real-world applications and implications:

• Secure communication:

Quantum communication can provide enhanced security for financial transactions, government communications, and other sensitive data transmission.

• Quantum-safe cryptography:

As quantum computers become more powerful, quantum-safe cryptography will be essential for protecting data from future attacks.

• Quantum-enabled industries:

Quantum communication could revolutionize industries like finance, healthcare, and defense by enabling secure and efficient data transfer and processing.

penny wrote:Yes, of course. The reason I include “byte” in quotation marks is to be a placeholder for the smallest data packet currently in use in FTL technology. The GA might not actually be using the smallest data packet that exists.

Remember back in my Eridani Edict thread I suggested a superior computer to be used by the MA.

BEHEMOTH

Its data packet is much smaller than the GA’s, being that it is a quantum computer.

So, why can’t the system scream a qubit. An FTL receiver simply broadcasting a qubit might require less complexity and increase efficiency, somewhat.

tlb wrote:We have no information on whether or not the Honorverse might be using quantum computers. If they are, then we have no information on whether quantum information can be sent over an FTL communication link. What we do know suggests that only gravity pulses can propagate at FTL speed. Not sure why you think it would be less complex to use a qubit.