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Attacking Darius:

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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sat Oct 23, 2021 7:27 am

cthia
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I think everyone missed the gist of kzt's initial analogy.

The golfers will be completely oblivious to the attack, thus NOT performing any evasive maneuvers. And any accompanying caddies will be standing off to the side out of the way. Usually when a sniper attacks, the target finds out about it by dropping dead.

Another problem in our analogy -- of any remaining targets on the golf course -- is knowing where to run. If there are two or more snipers, your panicked direction of escape may be right into the scope of the other sniper(s). A Wolfpack attack was a coordinated attack tactic used by submarines.

And in our case, other grasers may already be en route. In fact, several or more golfers and/or caddies might simultaneously drop dead. A sniper doesn't usually announce himself. Total stealth and surprise is a sniper's hallmark.

Also, on the golf course and usually the case when trying to avoid additional sniper fire once you are aware of it, is the problem of actually making it easier for the sniper in your attempt to escape. When the sniper took aim at you, he may have actually had less of a target. When running away you may have to expose your entire backside/broadside which is a much more tempting target. And let's not fail to mention, to zig zag on the golf course means there is an instance where you must stop, to change directions. In our case, a spread of grasers - optimally spread for mutual area of destruction -- may be positioned such that at least one graser will hit one of the remaining fleeing targets.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:16 pm

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cthia wrote:I think everyone missed the gist of kzt's initial analogy.

The golfers will be completely oblivious to the attack, thus NOT performing any evasive maneuvers. And any accompanying caddies will be standing off to the side out of the way. Usually when a sniper attacks, the target finds out about it by dropping dead.


Only if you assume the golf course is safe in the first place. Most golf courses are. Most enemy-held star systems aren't, at least until proven otherwise.

So why would a fleet that has scouted the system not perform some type of evasive manoeuvre? Especially if you know this particular enemy is in possession of stealth attack assets with deadly firepower. It could be complacency, but I don't buy it. I can only think of two reasons: either you think you will spot it before the attack lands and thus have sufficient time to counter it, or you think you can't evade anyway and thus won't spend resources trying to do something useless, increasing clock time in your ships and spending fuel.

The latter case is possible if the GA has no data on how fast the GTs can accelerate. If they assume those have the acceleration of at least a recon drone, like the SLN did with the Hasta, then any manoeuvre the fleet makes to throw an attack off target can be undone by the weapon. But if they know the spider has low acceleration, then they should simply keep evading as a matter of SOP.

Given some data from To End in Fire (no spoilers), if the invading fleet is not evading, that's probably because they think they can detect and stop the attack in time.

Another problem in our analogy -- of any remaining targets on the golf course -- is knowing where to run. If there are two or more snipers, your panicked direction of escape may be right into the scope of the other sniper(s). A Wolfpack attack was a coordinated attack tactic used by submarines.

And in our case, other grasers may already be en route. In fact, several or more golfers and/or caddies might simultaneously drop dead. A sniper doesn't usually announce himself. Total stealth and surprise is a sniper's hallmark.


3D in space offers far more chance of successfully evading.

The invading fleet may not know where to run or whether it can out-accelerate the torpedoes. But the defenders know they can't match the fleet's acceleration once it does go somewhere. So they will probably bank on the fleet staying put and absorbing the attacks because they can do nothing else. If the fleet evades, then all next attacks will miss.

Unless of course the defenders are throwing tens of thousands of torpedoes and hoping 5% or less actually get to range. Possible, but will they do it?


Also, on the golf course and usually the case when trying to avoid additional sniper fire once you are aware of it, is the problem of actually making it easier for the sniper in your attempt to escape. When the sniper took aim at you, he may have actually had less of a target. When running away you may have to expose your entire backside/broadside which is a much more tempting target. And let's not fail to mention, to zig zag on the golf course means there is an instance where you must stop, to change directions. In our case, a spread of grasers - optimally spread for mutual area of destruction -- may be positioned such that at least one graser will hit one of the remaining fleeing targets.


Humans are not very good random generators. When thinking about evading sniper fire, people will generally think of moving in a zig-zag pattern... which is quite predictable and, as you said, offers two very good moments per cycle when the velocity in the sideways direction is basically zero.

Evasion means applying random course changes that cannot be predicted. If you could only choose left or right at any time, here's a random evasion pattern I've just generated:

  • left
  • right
  • left
  • right
  • right
  • right
  • left
  • right
  • right
  • left
  • right
  • right
  • right
  • left
  • left
  • right
  • right
  • right
  • left
  • right
  • left
  • left
  • left
  • left

I used a random number generator for this.

Another problem is a mistake we see in movies all the time: moving in a single direction. Like Indiana Jones running from that spherical rock down the direction it is taking. Or running from a snowball down the hill. Just go sideways! If you can impart a better perpendicular vector change than the weapon can, you've evaded it.

So the first part of evasion is choosing a direction perpendicular to where the weapons are coming from: from the hyperlimit. You've got a full 360° of choice here. Then, once you've chosen your base course, you have a cone at least 45° wide, probably more, where you can choose random directions on, more than just "left" or "right" from my random list above.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Sat Oct 23, 2021 5:27 pm

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cthia wrote:I think everyone missed the gist of kzt's initial analogy.

The golfers will be completely oblivious to the attack, thus NOT performing any evasive maneuvers. And any accompanying caddies will be standing off to the side out of the way. Usually when a sniper attacks, the target finds out about it by dropping dead.


But that's not how it went down. The golfers saw the snipers while they were still setting up. The graser torps will be facing rolled wedges and have to shoot in passing--which denies them the vast majority of their firepower improvement. They're probably no better than a conventional missile in this scenario as while their beam is more powerful they have only one.

Whoever wrote that scene forgot how Honorverse missile combat works.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by tlb   » Sat Oct 23, 2021 7:54 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:Another problem is a mistake we see in movies all the time: moving in a single direction. Like Indiana Jones running from that spherical rock down the direction it is taking. Or running from a snowball down the hill. Just go sideways! If you can impart a better perpendicular vector change than the weapon can, you've evaded it.

Wasn't he in a cave, so there was no sideways space to move into?
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by tlb   » Sat Oct 23, 2021 7:59 pm

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cthia wrote:I think everyone missed the gist of kzt's initial analogy.

The golfers will be completely oblivious to the attack, thus NOT performing any evasive maneuvers. And any accompanying caddies will be standing off to the side out of the way. Usually when a sniper attacks, the target finds out about it by dropping dead.

Loren Pechtel wrote:But that's not how it went down. The golfers saw the snipers while they were still setting up. The graser torps will be facing rolled wedges and have to shoot in passing--which denies them the vast majority of their firepower improvement. They're probably no better than a conventional missile in this scenario as while their beam is more powerful they have only one.

Whoever wrote that scene forgot how Honorverse missile combat works.

At Darius, the graser torpedoes will be on spider drives and so will not be visible in the same way.
Careful, this might be a leak of something as yet unread by many.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sat Oct 23, 2021 10:55 pm

cthia
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Momentarily, and only momentarily, putting aside my thoughts of whether zig zagging in a mine field will ever yield anything other than "uh oh!"

I also question the effectiveness and the efficiency of the suggested tactic. In the HV a course change always had to be ordered and passed along to the fleet. I don't recall there ever being a need for successive repetitive course changes.

Envision an entire fleet with many ships. If there is a constant course change - as a zig zag pattern requires - if the course changes aren't controlled by a single computer, sooner or later there is going to be a collision. And as I said, the command was always "passed along to the fleet." I don't see any reason why the tactic can't be 'slaved' however that becomes dangerous as well. If it is in slaved mode further emergency evasive maneuvers may not be instantly available to any particular ship if the need arises.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by tlb   » Sat Oct 23, 2021 11:46 pm

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cthia wrote:Momentarily, and only momentarily, putting aside my thoughts of whether zig zagging in a mine field will ever yield anything other than "uh oh!"

I also question the effectiveness and the efficiency of the suggested tactic. In the HV a course change always had to be ordered and passed along to the fleet. I don't recall there ever being a need for successive repetitive course changes.

Envision an entire fleet with many ships. If there is a constant course change - as a zig zag pattern requires - if the course changes aren't controlled by a single computer, sooner or later there is going to be a collision. And as I said, the command was always "passed along to the fleet." I don't see any reason why the tactic can't be 'slaved' however that becomes dangerous as well. If it is in slaved mode further emergency evasive maneuvers may not be instantly available to any particular ship if the need arises.

Thinking about it for a bit, consider that it is impossible to make a quick right angle turn in space (** see below); so zigzagging a single ship might not be as effective as you think. Sure you can change the orientation of the ship ninety degrees and begin accelerating in a new direction; but you still have the original velocity that you built up and your ship will continue on that merry way until your new acceleration kills the old velocity. It's not like a car which uses friction with the ground to facilitate maneuvers, nor a ship on the sea. In fact a big ship at sea can have a very large turning radius, even with the resistance of the water.

** Actually you can make a space ship do a perfect slow right turn, but only by reversing the ship and coming to a complete stop; then rotating ninety and accelerating off.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Sun Oct 24, 2021 12:17 am

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cthia wrote:Momentarily, and only momentarily, putting aside my thoughts of whether zig zagging in a mine field will ever yield anything other than "uh oh!"


A mine field implies the mines are already there. Like I said above, you can saturate all possibilities by just throwing more torpedoes at the target, if you accept that 95% of them will miss.

"If brute force isn't working, you're not using enough of it."

I also question the effectiveness and the efficiency of the suggested tactic. In the HV a course change always had to be ordered and passed along to the fleet. I don't recall there ever being a need for successive repetitive course changes.


I agree for baseline changes. For routine evasions, we haven't heard anything but we know they're doing it. We know the ship does move inside the wedge, but we haven't ever heard anyone calling for it. We also haven't heard the useless call from the CO to implement evasion manoeuvres, like we hear on Star Trek a lot. Evasion shouldn't be opt-in, a second thought. It should be SOP.

We also hadn't heard about AIs prior to TEiF, but RFC had told us they were there all along. They just hadn't been central to anything in the story. So talking about how they were there and calculated the course changes, managed the life-support system, recharge rates of the grasers, all while ensuring the heads in the officers' quarters weren't clogged, simply wasn't a necessary use of the book pages.

My point is: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Envision an entire fleet with many ships. If there is a constant course change - as a zig zag pattern requires - if the course changes aren't controlled by a single computer, sooner or later there is going to be a collision. And as I said, the command was always "passed along to the fleet." I don't see any reason why the tactic can't be 'slaved' however that becomes dangerous as well. If it is in slaved mode further emergency evasive maneuvers may not be instantly available to any particular ship if the need arises.


You have a point that a fleet's full evasion is not necessarily something the computers would do on their own. But there's no reason why they couldn't do it to the entire fleet once programmed to do so. We may not have heard the order given to "implement evasion pattern kappa 3."

All ships don't also have to move in unison either. They could all be evading and moving in random directions while still keeping to the same baseline course (which gets updated by the flag) and remain within each other's support range. If you haven't read Walter Jon Williams' "Dread Empire's Fall" yet, please do: coming up with this kind of technique is actually the central thread-line of the story.

If you don't know him, Walter Jon Williams is also a military sci-fi writer and, like David, he weaves in a lot of political intrigue. Unlike David, it has far more political intrigue and it's very complex. His other, non-military series, the Drake Maijstral one, even worse in terms of intrigue complexity.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Sun Oct 24, 2021 12:31 am

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tlb wrote:Thinking about it for a bit, consider that it is impossible to make a quick right angle turn in space (** see below); so zigzagging a single ship might not be as effective as you think. Sure you can change the orientation of the ship ninety degrees and begin accelerating in a new direction; but you still have the original velocity that you built up and your ship will continue on that merry way until your new acceleration kills the old velocity. It's not like a car which uses friction with the ground to facilitate maneuvers, nor a ship on the sea. In fact a big ship at sea can have a very large turning radius, even with the resistance of the water.

** Actually you can make a space ship do a perfect slow right turn, but only by reversing the ship and coming to a complete stop; then rotating ninety and accelerating off.


I was not talking about a right-angle complete change of direction, whether that's a right-angle step change or a slow turn. That's not the point. The point is that you can impart a perpendicular change to your base vector that is sufficient to make an aimed weapon miss you, if it can't compensate as fast.

Of course, if it all averages out to the same base vector that the enemy has already calculated, all that evasion has only served to slow you down and waste fuel. This type of tactical evasion needs one parameter I can't give and I don't know if they can either, and that's the span of time the shifted vector must be maintained. Or, multiplying it by the acceleration, the distance you want to put between where the enemy expected you to be and where you need to be.

This parameter depends on the acceleration advantage you have compared to what you're trying to evade. At this point, we don't know if they know they have an advantage in the first place.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by kzt   » Sun Oct 24, 2021 5:16 am

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Loren Pechtel wrote:But that's not how it went down. The golfers saw the snipers while they were still setting up. The graser torps will be facing rolled wedges and have to shoot in passing--which denies them the vast majority of their firepower improvement. They're probably no better than a conventional missile in this scenario as while their beam is more powerful they have only one.

Whoever wrote that scene forgot how Honorverse missile combat works.

Nope. Everybody starts in energy range. And they shoot first as the RMN is doing the usual RMN 'here we are with our wedges down relaxing...' in the assembly area. Like they did at the Beowulf WH terminus in a recent book.

After all, it's not like the RMN leadership at Beowulf knew they faced a foe who can invisibly position energy weapons within 100,000 km of the most critical and heavily guarded bases of the RMN, right?
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