Attacking Darius:

Jonathan_S wrote:The system was founded about 200 years ago (early part of hte 18th century PD; and they're now up to the early part of the 20th). But it needed time to build up its economy.

And while having unknowing slaves focused on industrialization over quality of life improvements should make it more productive than any other self-funded single-system entity; the MAlign isn't going to have access to the rivers of cash the Manticoran Junction was generating. So they're very unlikely to have as much economic muscle to play with as the old SKM (though yes, they should be able to devote a much higher percentage to industrialization - and later to militarization).

WOAH WOAH WOAH~!
Serf/Slave economies are dirt poor. Why? The only time a serf/slave economy can be productive is if OUTSIDE entities BUY products made by said serf/slaves.

Likewise slave states are poor and collapse unless they have an outside force to blame all THEIR problems on.

Darius, due to its clandestine nature cannot be productive economically speaking as they cannot export their way to effluence, nor do they have outside forces to blame for their own problems and lack of freedoms.

In Darius, massive unrest/malcontent will be everpresent and on a per capita basis, their productivity will be poor.

Now RFC has said they aren't exactly slaves, but they aren't exactly free either so..... In between. Do they know of worlds outside of Darius? Are they truly insulated? If so, then one can dish out "improvements" in living standards piecemeal and they will be happy if you start their living standards very LOW and therefore the pace of improvement can keep ahead of the the mal content wave of being a serf. This will end eventually, but if you are crafty MALIGN take over universe people who need a lot of building capacity and ships to take over the galaxy one can keep ahead if one is proactive and plan it out ahead of time. Of course what song/dance do you tell the populace to keep them building ??? Or do you just pass it off as corruption or some such? Of course if that happens the quality/production drops in the tank and everyone starts demanding bribes etc.

kzt wrote:Maybe.

I suspect that it's probably possible to produce a noise jammer to prevent Apollo communication at a pretty good distance if you know where they will attack. You'll know exactly where the fleet is, so you can hammer them with extremely powerful signals (vastly more powerful than the missile transmitters) that are probably better collimated than the missile transmitters.

This would also jam the recon sat uplinks.

Jamming the fleet to missile link is harder, but given spiders, not that much. You can see the fleet coming for a long time while they cross a huge amount of distance. So you maneuver ships a much shorter distance into what would be a blocking position. (This is in addition to the ones that are going for a direct attack on the fleet.) Sharks would probably work for this.

And then you blast the hell out of the missile receivers with jammers.

then, as the fleet starts having to deal with the 100,000 MDMs waves, SD(P)s start to mysteriously explode.

And there is no particular reason you'll be able to localize a long range invisible target using energy weapons is you are light minutes out.

Lastly classic old-school LACs are perfectly suitable for local missile defense. You don't need super advanced reactors when you mission is 12-48 hours. There is no reason to reveal your best systems. And the 50,000 LAC wedges should do a pretty good job of hiding them anyhow.

That is a big fat no. This is space so there is not attenuation in the atmosphere(JAMMING), AKA matter in between your missile you wish to jam and its buddy, or its ship who fired said missile. So the ONLY interaction is skin effect. Said antennas will be directional and shielded on said missiles so you can try jam at 6 trillion billion gadzillion watts beamed in a narrow corridor at said missiles; it won't make diddly difference as at best all this means is the edge of the shielding gets excited at whatever harmononic frequency its material vibrates at and which the designers get to pick said material, ground etc... which literally leaves EVERYTHING else wide open in the EMS. In space there is no such thing as jamming unless you are so stupid as to NOT put a shield over the OPPOSITE direction your antenna is pointing... Stupidity is always possible, but...

EDIT: Uh, one possibility for jamming, and the ONLY possibility in space based warfare is to fly PAST the incoming missiles and jam... Which utterly precludes vast amounts of power for jamming

Relax wrote:That is a big fat no. This is space so there is not attenuation in the atmosphere(JAMMING), AKA matter in between your missile you wish to jam and its buddy, or its ship who fired said missile. So the ONLY interaction is skin effect. Said antennas will be directional and shielded on said missiles so you can try jam at 6 trillion billion gadzillion watts beamed in a narrow corridor at said missiles; it won't make diddly difference as at best all this means is the edge of the shielding gets excited at whatever harmononic frequency its material vibrates at and which the designers get to pick said material, ground etc... which literally leaves EVERYTHING else wide open in the EMS. In space there is no such thing as jamming unless you are so stupid as to NOT put a shield over the OPPOSITE direction your antenna is pointing... Stupidity is always possible, but...

EDIT: Uh, one possibility for jamming, and the ONLY possibility in space based warfare is to fly PAST the incoming missiles and jam... Which utterly precludes vast amounts of power for jamming

Though missile's have bidirectional communications. And the receivers on the ships that are receiving the missile telemetry are pointed more or less towards the enemy. So in theory "6 trillion billion gadzillion watts beamed in a narrow corridor" at the launching ships should keep them from understanding any telemetry coming back from the missiles; which will degrade their accuracy. (Though presumably not by anywhere near as much as if you could jam the control link coming from the ship to the missiles)

Relax wrote:EDIT: Uh, one possibility for jamming, and the ONLY possibility in space based warfare is to fly PAST the incoming missiles and jam... Which utterly precludes vast amounts of power for jamming

No, the target is almost always in a straight line between the launching ship and the missile swarm. Or close enough that it doesn't matter.

And I tend to believe that an entire planetary power grid can usually produce significantly more power than a missile reactor. This tends to suggest to me that the power budget of defenders jammer might be somewhat higher than the output of a missile transmitter.

And you can predict generally where the point that your opponent will likely be based on the geometry of the situation. And these are the guys with gigantic invisible ships. A DN class reactor complex probably produces a pretty good amount of power. Since people parking huge invisible jammers between the fleet and the target probably didn't get predicted during the design phase of Apollo it seems likely that this might prove troublesome.

kzt wrote:And you can predict generally where the point that your opponent will likely be based on the geometry of the situation. And these are the guys with gigantic invisible ships. A DN class reactor complex probably produces a pretty good amount of power. Since people parking huge invisible jammers between the fleet and the target probably didn't get predicted during the design phase of Apollo it seems likely that this might prove troublesome.

How can you have invisible jammers? Isn't that an oxymoron? Something putting out a zillion gazillion watts of energy is a pretty bright source.

Anyway, a simple counter to that is to use a relay. It may have not been needed so far, but it's entirely doable to site one downrange and offset of the direct path. It could be as stealthy as a Ghost Rider. It could be a Ghost Rider II.

cthia wrote:Also, do consider that the Spider may be a lot stealthier.

That it may be. But there's no way that the MAN would know that before the first battle conditions.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
How can you have invisible jammers? Isn't that an oxymoron? Something putting out a zillion gazillion watts of energy is a pretty bright source.

Anyway, a simple counter to that is to use a relay. It may have not been needed so far, but it's entirely doable to site one downrange and offset of the direct path. It could be as stealthy as a Ghost Rider. It could be a Ghost Rider II.

There are counters to anything. But it you didn't predict it during design phase it's not going to be trivial to implement. Given that it requires a DD sized KH2 relay modified with a big fusion reactor, a huge FTL uplink (since it is designed to operate at under a light second from a SD(p) tactical section) and a high thrust impeller it probably isn't something you can improvise in the field.

And maybe someone might want to blow up that funny looking object separating from the fleet?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Also, do consider that the Spider may be a lot stealthier.

That it may be. But there's no way that the MAN would know that before the first battle conditions.

Sure they would know. They are the developers of the technology. They would certainly have reason to believe that the Spider would either be less or more stealthy. But I agree that it wouldn't be written in stone until field tested. But they would already have expectations. Just like any navy has with any technology. As with the RMNs Apollo program, it could exceed all expectations and perform even better than advertised.

"OMG, we're so close we can look down the Queen's blouse!"

kzt wrote:

Relax wrote:EDIT: Uh, one possibility for jamming, and the ONLY possibility in space based warfare is to fly PAST the incoming missiles and jam... Which utterly precludes vast amounts of power for jamming

No, the target is almost always in a straight line between the launching ship and the missile swarm. Or close enough that it doesn't matter.

And I tend to believe that an entire planetary power grid can usually produce significantly more power than a missile reactor. This tends to suggest to me that the power budget of defenders jammer might be somewhat higher than the output of a missile transmitter.

And you can predict generally where the point that your opponent will likely be based on the geometry of the situation. And these are the guys with gigantic invisible ships. A DN class reactor complex probably produces a pretty good amount of power. Since people parking huge invisible jammers between the fleet and the target probably didn't get predicted during the design phase of Apollo it seems likely that this might prove troublesome.

There are two different types of jamming. Uplink jamming and downlink jamming. One is usually considered more difficult because it requires more power to saturate all of the antennas involved. Our closest analogue at present is the development of technology that jams satellite communication, either the uplink or the downlink. And the equipment has been found to be as small as a frisbee.

It is all simply wave mechanics and any wave can be jammed if you know its frequency. One method is called "constructive jamming" whereby a certain frequency is used to amplify a given wave making it bigger and beyond the threshold required. "Destructive jamming" uses a wave's frequency against itself to cancel out the wave. In the HV, "getting a good look at the enemy's ECM" is about getting the frequency so that you can jam that frequency and/or filter it.

But, I would assume it should be far easier for a Spider to launch a platform behind the swarm of missiles to overpower the signal they are receiving. Since RMN missiles operate so closely together, it should make it easier. Also, do note that the control missile is in constant communication with the ship sending it updated info in real time. Cutting that link also kills the effectiveness of the Apollo brood. And it should be far easier to overpower the output of the control missile.

cthia wrote:But, I would assume it should be far easier for a Spider to launch a platform behind the swarm of missiles to overpower the signal they are receiving. Since RMN missiles operate so closely together, it should make it easier. Also, do note that the control missile is in constant communication with the ship sending it updated info in real time. Cutting that link also kills the effectiveness of the Apollo brood. And it should be far easier to overpower the output of the control missile.

RMN: 'But it's absurd to think that a huge jamming platform could get into that position...'