?

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The acceleration of a graser torp is limited for a different reason that an LD.

You're right that it shouldn't need grav plates; however it's implied that spider drive acceleration is a factor of the number of spider emitters that you have; which in turn is a factor of the size of the object you're trying to accelerate. Smaller objects (compared to ships) have room for few emitters and thus have low acceleration.

Mission of Honor ch. 28, when describing the graser torp, tells us "It was simply impossible to fit a spider drive capable of more than a few hundred gravities’ acceleration into something small enough to make a practical weapon."

That sounds like roughly what an LD can do at full emergency; but that seems to be a coincidence since it's different limits (crew vs drive) in play for each. An LD has up to 150 gees as normal w/ 1g felt; 210 gees as combat max w/ 4g felt; and 310 as emergency max w/ 9g felt. That's also from that same chapter

That's interesting because it implies that much larger spider driven graser platforms may achieve significantly higher acceleration.

Jonathan_S wrote:Yep, it does seem that if you want to make an impractical weapons (to flip the quote 'round) you could make one a lot larger in order to get the spider's acceleration up.

How far up? We don't know. But the graser torp is certainly a long, long, way from the acceleration of MDMs (which are, themselves, already significantly smaller than the existing graser torp); so I don't even want to think about how much larger it'd have to be to get the ~150x improvement you'd need to go from its existing "few hundred" gees to even the low acceleration setting (46,000 gees) of an MDM.

Got it. But I was entertaining more practical, and therefore reachable goals, like increasing tactical maneuverability just enough.

For instance, in the Fox & Geese scenario, if the MA can increase the accel of their invisible weapons platforms to, say, 350 gees, then a heavily seeded system of platforms would be practically impenetrable if the GA cannot detect them. They would be agile enough to evade blindly fired weapons, destroy all drones, and quick enough to cover huge volumes of space via mutual support.

cthia wrote:For instance, in the Fox & Geese scenario, if the MA can increase the accel of their invisible weapons platforms to, say, 350 gees, then a heavily seeded system of platforms would be practically impenetrable if the GA cannot detect them. They would be agile enough to evade blindly fired weapons, destroy all drones, and quick enough to cover huge volumes of space via mutual support.

Every single ship anyone has can do better than 350 G, even the SLN's old SDs.

Anyway, I don't think you can make a GT that can reach 300 gravities without making it as long as a battlecruiser.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:For instance, in the Fox & Geese scenario, if the MA can increase the accel of their invisible weapons platforms to, say, 350 gees, then a heavily seeded system of platforms would be practically impenetrable if the GA cannot detect them. They would be agile enough to evade blindly fired weapons, destroy all drones, and quick enough to cover huge volumes of space via mutual support.

Every single ship anyone has can do better than 350 G, even the SLN's old SDs.

Anyway, I don't think you can make a GT that can reach 300 gravities without making it as long as a battlecruiser.

True, they can. GA ships are approaching, what, 600 gees?

Please, properly consider my post. Are you familiar with Fox & Geese? Each goose does not have to cover the entire board. Any particular goose is only responsible for a certain - let's say sector - as the outfielders in baseball, or your partner in tennis doubles, or any particular teammate in volleyball is only responsible for their share of the court.

There is no need to equal the accel of GA warships when one is forming a net. Since the GA can not see what they are facing, their accel will have to be lower. Since they cannot see, the GA cannot adequately exploit their advantage. You cannot pull warships out of position that you cannot see and hope to take advantage of it. Where is the hole in coverage?

In their Home System - while hidden and dug in - there is no need to equal the GA's accel. And if the GA manages a way to detect them, an LD's accel won't matter even if it were equal.

As I said, they only need just enough tactical increase in accel. Their total stealth and "foxiness" makes up for the rest.

And, zig zagging in a minefield always works, doesn't it?

cthia wrote:Please, properly consider my post. Are you familiar with Fox & Geese? Each goose does not have to cover the entire board. Any particular goose is only responsible for a certain - let's say sector - as the outfielders in baseball, or your partner in tennis doubles, or any particular teammate in volleyball is only responsible for their share of the court.

We still go back to the problem of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: “Space [...] is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.” (Douglas Adams)

We ran the numbers in the other thread: in order to protect all possible approaches, either you have to have inconceivable amount of industry that has not been seen in any 10 Core systems put together, or you protect a small volume only around the planet. If you do the latter, you allow the attacker free reign of the outer system, including the hyperlimit. That means the attacker can also get unlimited resupply and snipe at range.

I'm not saying it's possible to penetrate this defence in reasonable time. I'm saying it's not a good defence in the long run. It's horribly expensive.

There is no need to equal the accel of GA warships when one is forming a net. Since the GA can not see what they are facing, their accel will have to be lower. Since they cannot see, the GA cannot adequately exploit their advantage. You cannot pull warships out of position that you cannot see and hope to take advantage of it. Where is the hole in coverage?

That only applies if they are trying to run the gauntlet, which as I said above, isn't very big actually. They don't have to. They can simply stay at a reasonable distance from asset-that-must-be-protected-and-is-quite-obvious (like a planet with its shipyards) where there simply can't be enough stealth torpedoes to considerably hurt the fleet. And even if one or two torpedoes do get in range, they can't do enough damage to a fleet of 120-200 SD(P) and escorts.

The worst damage to the attacking fleet is its resupply fleet train. It can't much move that much faster than the torpedoes.

Yes, the more you approach the accel that the GA can pull, the better the defence is and therefore the wider the net can be. But with GA SDs pulling nearly 600 gravities if not more now, it's not going to happen.

Of course, the GA can do the same and spread out 700-gravity LACs around its fleet. It doesn't need to know where the torpedoes are, it just needs to get close enough. We talked about this in the other thread too: there's no way to penetrate a sphere of LACs and attack the principals at the centre without interception.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Please, properly consider my post. Are you familiar with Fox & Geese? Each goose does not have to cover the entire board. Any particular goose is only responsible for a certain - let's say sector - as the outfielders in baseball, or your partner in tennis doubles, or any particular teammate in volleyball is only responsible for their share of the court.

We still go back to the problem of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: “Space [...] is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.” (Douglas Adams)

We ran the numbers in the other thread: in order to protect all possible approaches, either you have to have inconceivable amount of industry that has not been seen in any 10 Core systems put together, or you protect a small volume only around the planet. If you do the latter, you allow the attacker free reign of the outer system, including the hyperlimit. That means the attacker can also get unlimited resupply and snipe at range.

I'm not saying it's possible to penetrate this defence in reasonable time. I'm saying it's not a good defence in the long run. It's horribly expensive.

There is no need to equal the accel of GA warships when one is forming a net. Since the GA can not see what they are facing, their accel will have to be lower. Since they cannot see, the GA cannot adequately exploit their advantage. You cannot pull warships out of position that you cannot see and hope to take advantage of it. Where is the hole in coverage?

That only applies if they are trying to run the gauntlet, which as I said above, isn't very big actually. They don't have to. They can simply stay at a reasonable distance from asset-that-must-be-protected-and-is-quite-obvious (like a planet with its shipyards) where there simply can't be enough stealth torpedoes to considerably hurt the fleet. And even if one or two torpedoes do get in range, they can't do enough damage to a fleet of 120-200 SD(P) and escorts.

The worst damage to the attacking fleet is its resupply fleet train. It can't much move that much faster than the torpedoes.

Yes, the more you approach the accel that the GA can pull, the better the defence is and therefore the wider the net can be. But with GA SDs pulling nearly 600 gravities if not more now, it's not going to happen.

Of course, the GA can do the same and spread out 700-gravity LACs around its fleet. It doesn't need to know where the torpedoes are, it just needs to get close enough. We talked about this in the other thread too: there's no way to penetrate a sphere of LACs and attack the principals at the centre without interception.

We've seen Invicti pull 607 or 608 gravities when facing Raging Justice. Gryphons @ 8.34 Mtons originally had a max accel of 402.1 Gs, and were right on the max mass/accel tipping point. Invicti are 5% larger, and probably near the current inflection point, and pulling 607 Gs, had to have a compensator with ~55% accel increase over baseline. Fully upgraded RMN LACs should be able to pull >830 Gs with the same Generation Comp.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Please, properly consider my post. Are you familiar with Fox & Geese? Each goose does not have to cover the entire board. Any particular goose is only responsible for a certain - let's say sector - as the outfielders in baseball, or your partner in tennis doubles, or any particular teammate in volleyball is only responsible for their share of the court.

We still go back to the problem of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: “Space [...] is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.” (Douglas Adams)

Yes, space is big. The Galaxy is even bigger. And the Universe is unfathomable.

But when an attacker crosses the hyper limit, the defender's area of concern becomes much smaller. Falling further down the gravity well in hopes of a zero/zero intercept with the planet changes the tactical situation more into something resembling a choke point.

Like the Hot Gates of Thermopylae. Perhaps not as severe as the Thermopylae pass, but still, plans of controlling the orbitals certainly shouldn't be easy, with an invisible enemy. Defending the orbitals diminishes the defender's area of responsibility significantly, comparatively. Lobbing missiles from long distance may be a waste of missiles, if this battle takes place in the distant future when the enemy has had time to "dig in."

It is odd that your traditional read on the tactical situation does not change considering that this is an enemy you cannot see. That is an error that could be very fatal.

You also fail to realize what strategic situation will undoubtedly exist for the GA. The GA cannot simply hyper into the system and destroy peripheral infrastructure and then turn around and leave without any further confrontation. This can't simply be a raid. The MAlign is not an entity you can attack, and make the mistake of leaving their Navy intact. You are charged with controlling the orbitals and forcing the planet and government to surrender. Or, however long it takes this entity - who doesn't play by the rules of war - to get their invisible ships into position in your Home System will KEW your planet into ruins.

So, to do that, an attacker has to control the orbitals. Controlling the orbitals requires running the gauntlet. Running the gauntlet is oftentimes difficult and suicidal. However, I would imagine that running the gauntlet while being blind IS suicidal.

Note:
I always assumed that space stations and orbitals are located in the path of common travel lanes near the elliptic. Half of the area around the planet is protected by the planet. You cannot target a space station with a planet in-between you and the target.

I would like to know how much elapsed time must pass before you can consider the orbitals under your control. The MA's ships are slower. So, do you really control the orbitals? Is it wise to fire on the planet of a misaligned species? They know where you live.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We ran the numbers in the other thread: in order to protect all possible approaches, either you have to have inconceivable amount of industry that has not been seen in any 10 Core systems put together, or you protect a small volume only around the planet. If you do the latter, you allow the attacker free reign of the outer system, including the hyperlimit. That means the attacker can also get unlimited resupply and snipe at range.

I'm not saying it's possible to penetrate this defence in reasonable time. I'm saying it's not a good defence in the long run. It's horribly expensive.

I keep saying that the GA's fleet train will have a very limited expiration date in this system. Therefore, the GA will not have an unlimited supply of missiles. The fleet train will be as close to certain death as any GA platforms.

I also keep saying that I suspect storyline to advance the timeline enough for the MA to become a worthy adversary. So the constant bit about the MA not having enough time to seed the system doesn't worry me. Pair that with the fact that Darius is a virgin system to war. At the time of invasion, they will not have suffered losing endless tons of infrastructure.

cthia wrote:There is no need to equal the accel of GA warships when one is forming a net. Since the GA can not see what they are facing, their accel will have to be lower. Since they cannot see, the GA cannot adequately exploit their advantage. You cannot pull warships out of position that you cannot see and hope to take advantage of it. Where is the hole in coverage?

Thinksmarkedly wrote:That only applies if they are trying to run the gauntlet, which as I said above, isn't very big actually. They don't have to. They can simply stay at a reasonable distance from asset-that-must-be-protected-and-is-quite-obvious (like a planet with its shipyards) where there simply can't be enough stealth torpedoes to considerably hurt the fleet. And even if one or two torpedoes do get in range, they can't do enough damage to a fleet of 120-200 SD(P) and escorts.

The worst damage to the attacking fleet is its resupply fleet train. It can't much move that much faster than the torpedoes.

Yes, the more you approach the accel that the GA can pull, the better the defence is and therefore the wider the net can be. But with GA SDs pulling nearly 600 gravities if not more now, it's not going to happen.

Of course, the GA can do the same and spread out 700-gravity LACs around its fleet. It doesn't need to know where the torpedoes are, it just needs to get close enough. We talked about this in the other thread too: there's no way to penetrate a sphere of LACs and attack the principals at the centre without interception.

See above.

The 700+ gravities a LAC can pull will be irrelevent. I keep telling you, when you are blind you have to slow down and feel your way around. Or stumble and fall. If you fall, you die. The LACs won't be able to leave the protection of the fleet anyway to go charge after ghosts. To control the orbitals, that same 120 - 200 SDs will have to run the gauntlet. The invisible gauntlet. Good luck with that.

700+ gravity LACs. All dressed up and in a hurry to go where? I double doggone dare them to go rushing blindly down Alice's gravity well like arrogant clueless Solarians. What a Wonderland.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The acceleration of a graser torp is limited for a different reason that an LD.

You're right that it shouldn't need grav plates; however it's implied that spider drive acceleration is a factor of the number of spider emitters that you have; which in turn is a factor of the size of the object you're trying to accelerate. Smaller objects (compared to ships) have room for few emitters and thus have low acceleration.

Mission of Honor ch. 28, when describing the graser torp, tells us "It was simply impossible to fit a spider drive capable of more than a few hundred gravities’ acceleration into something small enough to make a practical weapon."

That sounds like roughly what an LD can do at full emergency; but that seems to be a coincidence since it's different limits (crew vs drive) in play for each. An LD has up to 150 gees as normal w/ 1g felt; 210 gees as combat max w/ 4g felt; and 310 as emergency max w/ 9g felt. That's also from that same chapter

That's interesting because it implies that much larger spider driven graser platforms may achieve significantly higher acceleration.

Jonathan_S wrote:Yep, it does seem that if you want to make an impractical weapons (to flip the quote 'round) you could make one a lot larger in order to get the spider's acceleration up.

How far up? We don't know. But the graser torp is certainly a long, long, way from the acceleration of MDMs (which are, themselves, already significantly smaller than the existing graser torp); so I don't even want to think about how much larger it'd have to be to get the ~150x improvement you'd need to go from its existing "few hundred" gees to even the low acceleration setting (46,000 gees) of an MDM.

Understood. However, as far as I can see, what makes it impractical is time. Building those platforms will mean one less LD. But what if time allows for them. And what if they are built much cheaper and faster than an LD because they don't have a crew, and they are essentially hollow shells. Somewhat like an SD(P).

And what if the MA can squeeze more accel out of them naturally. After all, this is their first generation. And what if they gain another boost in accel because the overall mass is significantly lower and they manage to make the drive more efficient.

At any rate, simply as a tactical weapon, I can't see them being impractical.

Beware double post.

cthia wrote:Note:
I always assumed that space stations and orbitals are located in the path of common travel lanes near the elliptic. Half of the area around the planet is protected by the planet. You cannot target a space station with a planet in-between you and the target.

Though there's nothing that stops a military attacker from making a more polar transition - hypering in near the elliptic is mostly a habit, not a requirement (though it does slightly reduce wear on the ship's drive).

(Remember that at Hades StateSec had the odd little early indication of potential non-friendlies by having routine traffic emerge at a much higher than standard elevation from the elliptic)

An attacker coming in from higher up on the sphere of the hyper limit would likely be a little further from the planet, but they'd have a clear view of anything orbiting is a orbit more or less in the elliptic plane.
(Whether or not they'd be willing to launch missiles from that far out would depend on how much they trust them -- but the planet's bulk wouldn't be shielding those targets)

cthia wrote:But when an attacker crosses the hyper limit, the defender's area of concern becomes much smaller. Falling further down the gravity well in hopes of a zero/zero intercept with the planet changes the tactical situation more into something resembling a choke point.

Of course it's smaller. The problem is that however small it is, the hyper limit is still way too big for any single-system navy to protect the sphere.

Further down the gravity well, MUCH closer to the planet, the situation is different. But we're talking a handful of light-seconds from the planet, not light-minutes.

It is odd that your traditional read on the tactical situation does not change considering that this is an enemy you cannot see. That is an error that could be very fatal.

This has nothing to do with the ability to see anything. This is simply about the maximum range of the spider assets given the time and a probabilistic encounter. If the GA knows the acceleration limits of the spiders, then they can make use of this advantage. If they don't, they'd have to come up with a very different plan because their risk assessment and probability of success shift considerably. They'd probably send probing attacks first, which may reveal some of the constraints.

However, the defenders do know the capabilities. And they shouldn't bet the farm on the GA not knowing the upper acceleration limits of their defences. That's a very, very thin defence. So the defenders need to disposition their assets in a way that actually defends something.

You also fail to realize what strategic situation will undoubtedly exist for the GA. The GA cannot simply hyper into the system and destroy peripheral infrastructure and then turn around and leave without any further confrontation. This can't simply be a raid. The MAlign is not an entity you can attack, and make the mistake of leaving their Navy intact. You are charged with controlling the orbitals and forcing the planet and government to surrender. Or, however long it takes this entity - who doesn't play by the rules of war - to get their invisible ships into position in your Home System will KEW your planet into ruins.

Who said anything about leaving? I'm talking about a siege. Unless the MAlign has equipped every freighter with stealth and a spider, which is extremely unlikely, the freighters and ore haulers from the outer system will be vulnerable to interdiction. They can't even be used as good traps, because no freighter ever made can fight a single LAC. And don't say Q-ships, because they can only be used once and you can't have all your freighters be Q-ships.

The siege can't stop the stealth ships from leaving, but those that have left can't easily return. Unlike the spiders, the GA missiles can cover 65 million km in 9 minutes and 6 light-minutes in 15, a time that doesn't allow the returning ship to have sufficiently moved to guarantee escaping. And where is it going to rearm?

I always assumed that space stations and orbitals are located in the path of common travel lanes near the elliptic. Half of the area around the planet is protected by the planet. You cannot target a space station with a planet in-between you and the target.

Of course you can. To "see" what's on the other side, you just need some Ghost Riders having swung a wide curve around the planet. Then fire a missile past it, which turns and shoots backwards.

Another point is that something in any non-stationary orbit is moving relative to the planet, so it will come out in the open eventually. And if it's in stationary orbit so it won't do that, then it's also 36000 km from the planet, meaning it can be fired from the sides. Plus, te attackers can also move so the planet is not between them.

Actually, something in a fast, low-orbit is harder to attack because of its proximity to the planet and accuracy of the weapons.

I keep saying that the GA's fleet train will have a very limited expiration date in this system. Therefore, the GA will not have an unlimited supply of missiles. The fleet train will be as close to certain death as any GA platforms.

No doubt that the GA would have a longer logistic line at this point. Their supplies must be brought in from far away, via hyper. Meanwhile, the defenders have the shortest possible supply lines: their sitting on their supply.

But remember they've yielded the entire space-based infrastructure outside the planet. All the mineral extraction facilities, haulers, and cloudscoops will be gone. And depending on how angered the CO of the attacking fleet is, he/she may decide to attack the near-orbit space facilities too. Apollo is accurate enough to do that to anything above very low orbit, from nearly the hyperlimit.

I also keep saying that I suspect storyline to advance the timeline enough for the MA to become a worthy adversary. So the constant bit about the MA not having enough time to seed the system doesn't worry me. Pair that with the fact that Darius is a virgin system to war. At the time of invasion, they will not have suffered losing endless tons of infrastructure.

We know it won't advance decades. And even if it did, "seeding" the system to the levels you're discussing wouldn't happen. To get the levels you're discussing, given the pace we've seen anywhere in the HV, they'd need multiple centuries.

The 700+ gravities a LAC can pull will be irrelevent. I keep telling you, when you are blind you have to slow down and feel your way around. Or stumble and fall. If you fall, you die. The LACs won't be able to leave the protection of the fleet anyway to go charge after ghosts. To control the orbitals, that same 120 - 200 SDs will have to run the gauntlet. The invisible gauntlet. Good luck with that.

No, that analogy does not apply. There's no need to decelerate. What matters is not the relative velocity, but the relative position.

The important thing is that if you're not trying to run the gauntlet, then your future position can't be predicted with any certainty. Given enough acceleration difference, the chance that any attack launched by the defenders will be in range of the sieging fleet is minimal. And given the sphere defence solution, with LACs around the perimeter, we've discussed, the chance of weapons penetrating the perimeter to strike at the big boys in the middle is minimal, even assuming maximum relative velocity, which you can't assume. Honor's attack at Solon, with a mere 2 Invictus-class SD(P)s and 6 CLACs, nearly stopped 11,000 Havenite missiles cold and those were screaming in at over three quarters of light-speed.

Against this, the MAlign would have far better chance using Cataphract missiles, which are very visible and much less powerful, but exist in much greater quantity and have a far better chance of generating an intercept.

Typical detectability of downwards hyper transitions by RMN combat ships seems to be about two light hours.

How many ships do you need to produce a 10 light minute mesh at 2 light hours?

120LM^2x4pi = ~181,000 square light minutes.

So you need 1810 Apollo capable vessels to be close enough to have any real chance of intercepting a ship crossing the hyper limit at 2 light hours.

And is they jump in 20 light minutes inside your sphere then what? What will you do if they jump in a dozen ships at a light second from your ship?

How big is your fleet?