Pawn - Q7 ... Checkmate?

cthia wrote:You are overthinking it. To acquire someone's password should be child's play. Simply slip a thumb drive in his pocket and compel him to insert the drive before typing the password. The drive will capture the password. There are a plethora of other very simple methods limited only by the imagination.

And now you have used up the agent--people know they are being controlled, if you let them live you're compromised. And the security should catch the malware on the thumb drive.

If the agent has been in place for quite some time, the Treecats shouldn't be able to read him. No more than Honor could read the entangled emotions of O'Hanrahan. Also, the agent could be an engineer deep down in the bowels of the ship where Treecats don't get to tread.

O'Hanrahan obviously believes she is working for the good guys. They can't have someone like her do anything obviously bad. And I think she would have been caught anyway.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:You are overthinking it. To acquire someone's password should be child's play. Simply slip a thumb drive in his pocket and compel him to insert the drive before typing the password. The drive will capture the password. There are a plethora of other very simple methods limited only by the imagination.

And now you have used up the agent--people know they are being controlled, if you let them live you're compromised. And the security should catch the malware on the thumb drive.

But the agent was expendable anyways. He, or she, was simply an Ace up the sleeve waiting for a very important mission. Consider how important it is to get that one ping sent. The computer will not catch malware launched with the correct privileges. With the correct privileges, it is no longer malware.

Loren Pectel wrote:

cthia wrote:If the agent has been in place for quite some time, the Treecats shouldn't be able to read him. No more than Honor could read the entangled emotions of O'Hanrahan. Also, the agent could be an engineer deep down in the bowels of the ship where Treecats don't get to tread.

O'Hanrahan obviously believes she is working for the good guys. They can't have someone like her do anything obviously bad. And I think she would have been caught anyway.

If the agent is in the bowels of the ship he may never come into contact with a Cat. And the thumb drive could be slipped into the pocket of an assistant who makes his rounds. In fact, if the agent is someone important, he may have admisnistrative privileges already.

I agree the entire party will be captured, especially after that one ping goes out. But, that will be much too late. Too bad for the pawns, but they gladly lay down their life for the MA.

If interested. The one ping is from The Hunt for Red October. "One ping please. Only one."

cthia wrote:I agree the entire party will be captured, especially after that one ping goes out. But, that will be much too late. Too bad for the pawns, but they gladly lay down their life for the MA.

If interested. The one ping is from The Hunt for Red October. "One ping please. Only one."

I remember the movie. Never read the novel, which I expect had much more depth.

Anyway, the problem with a transmission is that it requires simultaneously both a transmitter and a receiver. You haven't posited a plausible scenario under which a receiver can be sufficiently close at any arbitrary time when the ping is sent.

And I repeat: don't say spider. A spider ship can't keep up with a fleet of Grayson-derived impellers & compensators when it goes out to wherever it exercises. It stands to reason it exercises far from prying eyes, even assuming it did not hyper out to a nearby system. I'd make SOP to make a dog-leg course so it's not obvious to those who've observed the departure where the fleet ended up.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:
If interested. The one ping is from The Hunt for Red October. "One ping please. Only one."

I remember the movie. Never read the novel, which I expect had much more depth.

The Novel was... MUCH better. Instead of 3 Subs in that climax scene, there were 4 (2 US attack subs which could not attack the Russian Attack sub, but could aggressively maneuver), a P3 Orion ASW aircraft, and a fifth sub (an old US Boomer) destroyed as a decoy in front of the Russian Northern Fleet which was having a Mexican Standoff with the US Atlantic Fleet fielding a Iowa BB and several Carriers (including an Iwo Jima Amphib being used as a Harrier Sea Control ship).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I agree the entire party will be captured, especially after that one ping goes out. But, that will be much too late. Too bad for the pawns, but they gladly lay down their life for the MA.

If interested. The one ping is from The Hunt for Red October. "One ping please. Only one."

I remember the movie. Never read the novel, which I expect had much more depth.

Anyway, the problem with a transmission is that it requires simultaneously both a transmitter and a receiver. You haven't posited a plausible scenario under which a receiver can be sufficiently close at any arbitrary time when the ping is sent.

And I repeat: don't say spider. A spider ship can't keep up with a fleet of Grayson-derived impellers & compensators when it goes out to wherever it exercises. It stands to reason it exercises far from prying eyes, even assuming it did not hyper out to a nearby system. I'd make SOP to make a dog-leg course so it's not obvious to those who've observed the departure where the fleet ended up.

You are still sweating the small details.

Admittedly, I am under the impression that a ship does not need to be close to receive a grav signal, like what Honor first used which led to the discovery of FTL transmissions in the first place. It may take a while longer to receive the ping, but it will be received.

Also, you are overthinking it. A ship does not have to try and keep up with the fleet. The fleet always goes to a friendly base to plan operations; and to see the family for what may be the last time. Support ships need only lie in wait at Trevor's Star and the MBS. That ought to cover it.

Plus, all of the junctions should be back in full swing. BTW, under what registry did the Streak Boats operate?

I didn't read the book either, but because of Theemile's review, I want to! Thanks Theemile.


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ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:
If interested. The one ping is from The Hunt for Red October. "One ping please. Only one."

I remember the movie. Never read the novel, which I expect had much more depth.

Theemile wrote:The Novel was... MUCH better. Instead of 3 Subs in that climax scene, there were 4 (2 US attack subs which could not attack the Russian Attack sub, but could aggressively maneuver), a P3 Orion ASW aircraft, and a fifth sub (an old US Boomer) destroyed as a decoy in front of the Russian Northern Fleet which was having a Mexican Standoff with the US Atlantic Fleet fielding a Iowa BB and several Carriers (including an Iwo Jima Amphib being used as a Harrier Sea Control ship).

The aggressive maneuvering led to the best scene in the movie. "The hard part about playing chicken is knowing when to flinch."

This is also where I got the idea that missiles may be able to reacquire a friendly vessel after losing lock, if launched while being too close to the target. As I posited in the Attacking Darius thread, the GA will have to get downright deep and dirty into enemy territory to catch a glimpse of the Spiders.

cthia wrote:You are still sweating the small details.

Well, of course I am. I am pointing out that the small details point to big, glaring holes in the plan, to the point where they are unworkable.

Admittedly, I am under the impression that a ship does not need to be close to receive a grav signal, like what Honor first used which led to the discovery of FTL transmissions in the first place. It may take a while longer to receive the ping, but it will be received.

Correct, it doesn't need to be close, but there's still a range limitation. Standard ship gravitational sensors have a range of a light-hour or two, if very sensitive. Pluto is five and a half light-hours on average from the Sun. The Junction is 7 light-hours from Manticore-A. So it stands to reason that ships routinely make journey that are light-hours or even a light-day away. There's no reason that a fleet exercise needs to be close: if you're trying to hide your tactics from the enemy, SOP would dictate you do it away from where the enemy could see it.

And if you're going to go half a light-day out, then you may as well hyper out and drop out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. This adds two more complicating factors: both translations. The tailing ship needs to translate to alpha and then then back to n-space. In both cases, there's a very distinctive gravitational disturbance in the band that the fleet is in. There's no hiding that. Moreover, the tailing ship needs to stay close by while in hyper to see the fleet translate down from it back to n-space. My guess is that that would be way too close.

Also, you are overthinking it. A ship does not have to try and keep up with the fleet. The fleet always goes to a friendly base to plan operations; and to see the family for what may be the last time. Support ships need only lie in wait at Trevor's Star and the MBS. That ought to cover it.

That's before they ship out for a sensitive operation. Once OpSec is in effect, the crew doesn't get to see family or email loved ones. They are completely incommunicado.

All anyone on the outside knows is that they've just had liberty or shore leave, then went out to exercise. The whole point of OpSec is that no one on the outside knows that they went from the exercise to operation, or that there wasn't an exercise in the first place, but an operation. No one below the rank of Admiral, aside from those people serving in the Admirals' staff, should know that they are actually shipping out for an attack until they are in hyper.

Plus, all of the junctions should be back in full swing. BTW, under what registry did the Streak Boats operate?

I didn't read the book either, but because of Theemile's review, I want to! Thanks Theemile.
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Yes, the junctions should be in operation, but the fleet has priority. It ships out before any civilian ship.

However, this is the way the enemy could get advance notice. Not by inserting an agent to send a ping, which is unlikely to happen, unlikely to be observed and has risks of its own.

Instead, you can place stealthed observer ships around the Manticore Junction termini and other GA wormholes. Outside of their hyperlimit, but well inside the grav detection zone. The sails of superdreadnoughts are very distinctive, if you miss the fact that the normal traffic was halted and replaced for hours with military one. Any such transit can be observed, the observer can get a good count on the number of capital ships through, then race ahead. Moreover, the observer can make the transition from Warner to Mannerheim, which the GF can't because neither system is a GA member and those may deny passage for military vessels.

They could instead ship out immediately from Manticore to the staging area, wherever that is, but that may be a months-long travel, like it was for Filareta from Tasmania to Manticore. The streak boat may wait a month to see if the fleet returns or gets information it showed up elsewhere, but it can still race ahead.

cthia wrote:But the agent was expendable anyways. He, or she, was simply an Ace up the sleeve waiting for a very important mission. Consider how important it is to get that one ping sent. The computer will not catch malware launched with the correct privileges. With the correct privileges, it is no longer malware.

The ping gets sent, the nanites kill him, now the fleet is alerted. They'll change course.

If the agent is in the bowels of the ship he may never come into contact with a Cat. And the thumb drive could be slipped into the pocket of an assistant who makes his rounds. In fact, if the agent is someone important, he may have admisnistrative privileges already.

I was figuring everyone on the key ships would be screened at boarding.

And I have doubts about warships running stuff from a thumb drive in the first place. Nothing without a proper signature should be executed at all--and nobody on the ship will have such rights. Scripts, yes, programs, no.

If interested. The one ping is from The Hunt for Red October. "One ping please. Only one."

Yeah, I recognized it.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I remember the movie. Never read the novel, which I expect had much more depth.

The movie is a pale shadow of the book. Things make a lot more sense in the book (Clancy books are very good at everyone having reasonable reasons for what they're doing), the movie combined things to shorten it. Note that the movies portray Ryan very differently than the books. He's a careful CIA guy, not the cowboy of the movies.

cthia wrote:This is also where I got the idea that missiles may be able to reacquire a friendly vessel after losing lock, if launched while being too close to the target. As I posited in the Attacking Darius thread, the GA will have to get downright deep and dirty into enemy territory to catch a glimpse of the Spiders.

I think Honorverse missiles could be a lot more intelligent about IFF than current torpedoes. A torpedo has very minimal communications with the world once it's wire is cut or broken, while it's not myopic like Honorverse missiles it's vision is abysmal because of the speed it's moving through the water.

It would not be difficult to make a system by which a friendly ship could destruct a missile that has acquired a friendly. Before the battle you generate a bunch of random numbers, every missile is given an ID. This list is shared amongst all friendlies.

If a missile is coming for a friendly it beams a signal in that direction, missile xxxxxxx destruct and the missile complies. The space over which the numbers are allocated is sparse enough that trying to send random destruct commands won't do any good. (Note that there are websites that use this for secure hiding of web pages even now. The website will not respond to a request to list the directory, it will only respond to a request for the right page. If you don't already have a link you can't find it.)

While the ship that is being targeted likely won't know exactly which missile is coming for it it will have a good idea and any other missiles in the flight are either far away or already detonated, sending codes for every possibility is viable.