cthia wrote:ThinksMarkedly wrote:"At some point" is the key phrase here. I don't see the need to do it right now. It's true the GA has no reason to keep it a secret, since its opponent already knows the secret too. It's not an advantage to them to keep the tight lid on what the Alignment already knows. And what if the Sollies can also get streak drive on their new generation SD(P)s that will start rolling out in the 1930s? The danger is only if the Sollies can actually surpass both the Alignment's and the Alliance's development on the streak drive and turn it into an advantage.
But they also have no reason to expose the details.
Time-out. I was under the impression that the streak drive has no tactical benefit (in the heat of battle), but only strategic benefit. Of course, it could have assisted the Sollies to shave time off arriving in Manticoran Space to get trampled.
I'm certainly not seeing a tactical benefit in normal combat. When you're inside the hyper limit your hyper generator is irrelevant; and it seems the vast majority of combat occurs well within the hyper limit.
I guess if you're messing around with long range fire from outside the hyper limit having a faster recharging hyper generator would be a tactical benefit; but we've seen nothing to indicate that the Streak Drive would have a different charging/cycle time than a "normal" hyper generator. So again, no tactical impact.
Now in the exceedingly rare case of combat within hyper (whether you're intercepted there or pursued into hyper as you flee) I can see a tactical benefit to having a more capable hyper generator than your opponent.
* Defensively if you can get into a higher band than your opponent then you're utterly safe from them.
* Offensively if your acceleration rates are closely enough matched then if you've got equivalent hyper generators you'll never catch them - you'll both end up in the Theta bands at 0.6c and thus unable to close the range. But if you've got a more capable hyper generator then you can pop up another band and use that to attempt to drop out ahead of them. (It's really tricky, since they'll presumably try to alter course so you don't remerge within weapons range - plus you do lose velocity going up and back down, so you'll likely only get a snap shot off as they go by you.) The tactic would work better if you seriously outnumber and outgun the fleeing force so you can split your forces with only some going ahead. Then if your targets chance course that lets your trailing force cut the corner and make up some ground on them, but if they don't then you can try to drop the other half of your force in their path.
Still, it's an exceedingly unusual combat where hyper generators could have any tactical impact.