SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!

cthia wrote:Thanks, very informative. What about CM pods for LACs? And LACs shouldn't even have to tow these bigger CMs. Simply use pods of normal CMs to increase a LAC's survivability. Do LACs even have a towing capacity? I don't ever recall hearing about a LAC towing anything inside its wedge.

LACs can't tow inside their wedge; but the RMN/GSN designs do have a limited towing capacity (Not sure about Haven's; they might have omitted that in their ruthless drive to downsize in order to gain acceleration). IIRC they can tow up to 3 pods; but because of a LAC's small size, and the fact they have to tow it outside their wedge, even a single pod seriously reduces their acceleration and wrecks their stealth.

Pods of normal CMs have been discussed several times before, with RFC explaining why the RMN won't be adopting them. And use with LACs was brought up and shot down during those threads.


Basically my recollection is that the performance hit and signature increase for a LAC towing a pod is bad enough that it'd actually be less survivable despite towing around maybe up to 30 or so extra CMs in that pod.

And it doesn't help that IIRC a LAC doesn't have the fire control for any significant number of extra simultaneous CMs. Carrying more wouldn't let it take any bigger a bite out of a given salvo; which makes carrying more by way of pods even less attractive since you can't assume any pods will avoid death by proximity kills. You just don't have the fire control to make proper use of all your towed CMs in time - but only your internal CMs can be counted on to work after the first salvo arrives. So it's a lot of downside to, at best, get one extra salvo's worth of anti-missile endurance. (And at worst being more visible simply gets your LAC screen killed in the first salvo and then you've got less anti-missile capability for the follow-ons than you would have had if they hadn't been towing CM pods)

cthia wrote:Question. Do forgive me because I know this has already been covered. But does the Streak drive imply that Darius is ahead in compensator efficiency?

Nope. Streak drive has nothing to do with acceleration (which is what the compensator affects).

Streak drive is only the "marketing name" for a better hyper generator. It lets ships climb 2 hyper levels higher (into the Kappa bands) than anybody else's hyper generators (Theta bands; for military grade ones). But that's all it is.


(But for moving between stars hyper band is the biggest factor in transit time; because it controls how much distance they need to actually cover. Second most important is rad shielding because that controls their top speed -- and they spend most of the journey cruising at that top speed. Acceleration is third, and by quite a long way, because it'll save a little time but only until they reach that top speed)

Brigade XO wrote:My guess is that Galton did NOT build the Streak Drive ships. They may have had input on initial research but -given the paranoia and the intention to sacrifice Galton as a bait & switch for the Alignment brains location- everything would have been swept up and removed.

So far nobody has working plans or a sample of a Streak vessel and the Alignment wants to keep it that way. Makes no sense to build them at Galton and risk loosing control.

That Streak ships were used between Hole-In-The-Wall and probably Darius given the round trip times the have been calculated only means that they used them on time sensitive runs to smooth the flow of information etc. It has been said that it's not likely anybody will identify a Steak ship just on visuals and since they are only going to use that function in hyper they should be safe. Of course it is also probable that any streak ship in danger of being boarded or captured is going to go BOOM.

You're right that it's an advantage that the MAlign would not want to lose. So it's possible they didn't allow Galton to have streak drive ships, but that would be another hole in the Alamo Contingency. Not as big as having SDs show up from nowhere, but bigger than there being no spider drive in sight. And it makes the spider drive's absence more acute if no streak drive is found either.

As I said before, Simões was a streak drive physicist, so he knew the thing was being prototyped somewhere because he probably received data from the prototypes. And Harahap was running around in streak drive ships while working for Mesa. In fact, the ability for a newly recruited operative to run around from Talbott and Mesa on a streak drive courier tells me its classification level had been sufficiently lowered. This and the fact that 80% of Houdini evacuees ended up at Galton tells me that the MAlign sacrificed a lot of research in the name of Alamo. The Streak Drive wasn't revolutionary, it was just application of brute force, so someone would have eventually stumbled upon it.

So my money is on Streak Drive ships having been built at Galton.

If nothing else, the fact that Simões had defected and told the Galaxy about the drive he knew a lot about and the one he'd only heard about, and the fact that Harahap had joined the Manties should have prompted the MAlign to make sure the streak drive was found in the Galton databases, if it hadn't been there all along. The problem in this scenario is that just inserting into the databases wouldn't cut it. As a scientist working on the very thing, Simões would have had access to data obtained from prototypes and he'd have known exactly when he received such data. They'd also need to insert the people who would be able to tell they had built streak drive prototypes and couriers, sufficiently back in the past to account for everything the GA knows for a fact. Moreover, finding no ships in the system with that technology, from couriers to SD(P)s, simply wouldn't be believable, meaning they needed not only data and people, but also actual ships with the thing. And that then means technicians who built them and maintained them. That's a lot of people.

If they had omitted that information from Galton, they're screwed. There simply wasn't time to insert it, the hardware, and the people to make it believable between realising Simões had defected and the GA showed up (Simões showed up in Manticore in May 1922; Tenth Fleet showed up in Mesa 5 months later, ending Houdini). Don´t forget they need to make it believable only for the GA, they need to make it believable for the Galton population too, who is going to be interrogated and can't be allowed to believe they were pawns. The majority of technicians simply couldn't have shown up during Houdini because of the timing and because they're not high value enough. And as I said in the spoiler thread, it's worse to find the insertion in process than to not find anything at all. One is a curious and admittedly concerning discrepancy; the other is a major tampering by an outside force.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Don´t forget they need to make it believable only for the GA, they need to make it believable for the Galton population too, who is going to be interrogated and can't be allowed to believe they were pawns. The majority of technicians simply couldn't have shown up during Houdini because of the timing and because they're not high value enough. And as I said in the spoiler thread, it's worse to find the insertion in process than to not find anything at all. One is a curious and admittedly concerning discrepancy; the other is a major tampering by an outside force.

Regarding the Galton population at large, part of the conversation between Adebayo and Detweiler implies that they may have created a monster they could no longer fully control:

“Don’t worry about it,” she told him even more firmly. “Yes, there could be a downside. I understand that. I’m just saying that there’s a hell of an upside, as well, in terms of morale and purpose here in Galton. Guenther and I couldn’t have stifled those celebrations even if we’d tried.”

That seems to suggest that those celebrations weren't propaganda exercises ordered and organised top-down, like we're used to seeing out of North Korea. Galton society is the sort to spontanteously celebrate millions of its selected enemies being massacred without warning.

This has huge implications for the ongoing GA occupation of Galton. Being abandoned and potentially sacrified at the last moment by their "fearless" leaders and seeing Harrington render mercy anyway might cause a split in Galton society, away from this mass psychopathy.

But what if it doesn't?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:You're right that it's an advantage that the MAlign would not want to lose. So it's possible they didn't allow Galton to have streak drive ships, but that would be another hole in the Alamo Contingency. Not as big as having SDs show up from nowhere, but bigger than there being no spider drive in sight. And it makes the spider drive's absence more acute if no streak drive is found either.

As I said before, Simões was a streak drive physicist, so he knew the thing was being prototyped somewhere because he probably received data from the prototypes. And Harahap was running around in streak drive ships while working for Mesa. In fact, the ability for a newly recruited operative to run around from Talbott and Mesa on a streak drive courier tells me its classification level had been sufficiently lowered. This and the fact that 80% of Houdini evacuees ended up at Galton tells me that the MAlign sacrificed a lot of research in the name of Alamo. The Streak Drive wasn't revolutionary, it was just application of brute force, so someone would have eventually stumbled upon it.

So my money is on Streak Drive ships having been built at Galton.

Actually, it is more widespread than you are indicating, far beyond the prototype stage. The streak drive is already in wide, but controlled use and he was working on making improvements to it. From chapter 17 of Torch of Freedom:

"In the meantime," she continued, her tone shifting to something considerably more somber, "I think we have one particular problem I'm going to need you to spend some additional effort on."
"Problem, Ma'am?"
"Herlander Simões," she said, and he grimaced. She saw his expression and nodded.
"I know he's been under a lot of strain, Ma'am," he began, "but, so far, he's been holding up his end of his project, and—"
"Jack, I'm not criticizing his performance so far. And I'm certainly not criticizing the way you've handled him so far, either. But he's deeply involved in the entire streak drive improvement program, and that's one of our critical research areas. For that matter, he's got peripheral involvement in at least two other projects. I think, under the circumstances, it's probably appropriate for us to show a little additional concern in his case."

tlb wrote:Actually, it is more widespread than you are indicating, far beyond the prototype stage. The streak drive is already in wide, but controlled use and he was working on making improvements to it.

Oh, indeed, no doubt about it. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it was a prototype by current time. I meant that Simões had been involved in the project for years and had access to data from the prototype stage. That means he can date exactly when those prototypes must have existed and they must therefore have been built somewhere.

I suppose the bench-scale prototypes could have been done on Mesa, on some off-the-books installation that got blown up during Final Flourish, but actual ships are unlikely to have been built there. It doesn't seem like Mesa had a shipyard at all, at best a few repair slips for things that broke down and for the Mesan System Navy's use. Besides, he'd have known the turnaround time for feedback was more than an hour, so the technicians couldn't have been in-system.

Plus, as you say, he was involved in the improvement stage, meaning they must have had large-scale application of a non-improved version, which means at least a dozen ships but probably more, and he'd have had access to all that data. He can tell the GA that there were more than a dozen couriers with streak drive, that there were freighters with that thing.

So the question is not whether the GA knows they must find working streak drives in Galton. The question is whether the MAlign knew it soon enough to have left those pieces and their corresponding people in Galton.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:Actually, it is more widespread than you are indicating, far beyond the prototype stage. The streak drive is already in wide, but controlled use and he was working on making improvements to it.

Oh, indeed, no doubt about it. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it was a prototype by current time. I meant that Simões had been involved in the project for years and had access to data from the prototype stage. That means he can date exactly when those prototypes must have existed and they must therefore have been built somewhere.

I suppose the bench-scale prototypes could have been done on Mesa, on some off-the-books installation that got blown up during Final Flourish, but actual ships are unlikely to have been built there. It doesn't seem like Mesa had a shipyard at all, at best a few repair slips for things that broke down and for the Mesan System Navy's use. Besides, he'd have known the turnaround time for feedback was more than an hour, so the technicians couldn't have been in-system.

Plus, as you say, he was involved in the improvement stage, meaning they must have had large-scale application of a non-improved version, which means at least a dozen ships but probably more, and he'd have had access to all that data. He can tell the GA that there were more than a dozen couriers with streak drive, that there were freighters with that thing.

So the question is not whether the GA knows they must find working streak drives in Galton. The question is whether the MAlign knew it soon enough to have left those pieces and their corresponding people in Galton.

We know the Malign was using the Streak in all it's Couriers in 1920, and probably further back than that. Which means it was probably in late prototype no later than 1915. Still in that 10 year window we identified before where they Should have sent the project data there, but the question is did they? we don't know. And if they did, why choose that tech to send to Galton, when tech they knew would be used in (and specifically identified from) OB was not sent to Galton.

The Streak is something no one could readily identify without seeing a ship use it. So why potentially expose it and not other techs?

Theemile wrote:The Streak is something no one could readily identify without seeing a ship use it. So why potentially expose it and not other techs?

They have to choose the lesser of two evils: revealing the Streak Drive details or compromising the Alamo Contingency.

If neither the streak nor spider drive are found in Galton, then the GA will know even more surely there's another system the MAlign was building ships on, with big shipyards for freighters. That's three independent datum sources pointing to there being more than the eye can see: Simões reports on both drives, Harahap's use of streak couriers, and the sensor readings (or lack thereof) from both Yawata and Beowulf Strikes.

I think it would be harder to convince the Galaxy that the streak drive exists, since as you and others have said, it's externally indistinguishable from a regular hyper generator. The MAlign has been careful to not expose the speedier transit times where the Galaxy could see. The only people who can vouch for them are a crackpoint scientist who had a meltdown from losing his daughter and an ex-Gendarme terrorist who's sold his allegiance twice, with circumstantial/speculative evidence from the GA & allies. Whereas the spider drive can probably be more readily accepted by the serious powers because of the lack of any detectable emission in Manticore, Grayson, or Beowulf, the latter of which the SLN was present.

But it's not relevant whether the Galaxy at large believes this. It matters only that the GA governments and military do, with a bonus if the SLN does too.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:The Streak is something no one could readily identify without seeing a ship use it. So why potentially expose it and not other techs?

They have to choose the lesser of two evils: revealing the Streak Drive details or compromising the Alamo Contingency.

If neither the streak nor spider drive are found in Galton, then the GA will know even more surely there's another system the MAlign was building ships on, with big shipyards for freighters. That's three independent datum sources pointing to there being more than the eye can see: Simões reports on both drives, Harahap's use of streak couriers, and the sensor readings (or lack thereof) from both Yawata and Beowulf Strikes.

I think it would be harder to convince the Galaxy that the streak drive exists, since as you and others have said, it's externally indistinguishable from a regular hyper generator. The MAlign has been careful to not expose the speedier transit times where the Galaxy could see. The only people who can vouch for them are a crackpoint scientist who had a meltdown from losing his daughter and an ex-Gendarme terrorist who's sold his allegiance twice, with circumstantial/speculative evidence from the GA & allies. Whereas the spider drive can probably be more readily accepted by the serious powers because of the lack of any detectable emission in Manticore, Grayson, or Beowulf, the latter of which the SLN was present.

But it's not relevant whether the Galaxy at large believes this. It matters only that the GA governments and military do, with a bonus if the SLN does too.

But the Malign had no idea that the streak was penetrated until Simoes turned up alive in mid-2021. Prior to Simoes, the knowledge of the Spider drive (or just an invisible drive system) was at a higher risk of detection than that of the Streak. As I mentioned before, you can't determine if a ship has a streak drive unless you watch one using the streak drive. So the risk of one being discovered was much, much lower than a ship with a completely alien drive system, even if it is almost invisible. A sensor or a ship lying doggo could accidently see the spider ship's interaction with something else (opening the door to kick out a drone, or replenishing from a freighter), and then the knowledge is out there. And, of course, once one is used in the most heavily guarded system in the universe, well....

As for the timeline, Simoes and the Manty reports of invisible attackers were in the same rough timeframe, so the time to backpedal on one tech is about the same as the other.

So why would either be placed

Streak Drive has been used quite a bit. We have just seen that Jessyk has at least a few running via Warner (which seems to be the preferred point closest to the Darius wormhole). It was probably used in the ship out of Darius to deliver the Silver Bullet weapons to the freighter taking them to Beowulf. Aldona Anisimovna seems to be using one to do her running around in Talbot. Harahap/Firebrand certainly noticed he has very speedy transport from Mesa to his 1st round of assignments for the Alignment. So, Streak Drive in the equivalent of large private yachts, freighters, probably couriers (if not just Dispatch Boats).

Simoes was not alone in his research on Streak Drives and improvements. He worked in a lab full of people and it would be reasonable that they were all working on some segment of Streak Drive advancement. We have at least one view of the difficulty his problems caused by the culling of his daughter made with the people he had to work with and he was being kept -barely- making progress because Jack was his minder in keeping him working. The Alignment NEEDED whatever they could squeeze out of him. Clearly he was not going out with Houdini by that point but prior to that it is reasonable that he and most if not all of the people in that lab would have been on the Houdini list. That being said, it is unlikely they would have been sent to Galton if it was as important as the pushing Simoes would seem to indicate.

I don't remember if the ship that too Albrect Detweiler to the meeting with the heads of the RF was a Streak but given the time that round trip took out of Albrect's work, it probably was.

There are only two major ways someone is going to identify a Streak Drive ship based on what we have been told. One is for a physical inspection by knowledgeable people from the inside of a ship- like the propulsion equipment etc- and what Zilwicki and friends have done with data collection and noting "someting odd" about the clearly regular round trip runs of various ships. So the Alignment doesn't want anybody's naval people looking at the physical engineering on these ships and you don't want Customs Inspectors and Engineers taking a look either. Nobody goes on these ships not allowed and the crews don't get off. Their passengers can but that is controlled. Nobody at Mesa was going to pull an inspection of a Jessyk ship and as long as a private or commercial ship- in most systems- wasn't hooking up to a station but only transferring cargo and people by shuttle there would be no reason to invoke customs regulations. You could probably go right though the Manticore Junction of the ship was not stopping at the Junction or at any terminus it used with the Junction.

If Streak Drive isn't used in normal space then someone would have to catch a look in hyperspace and the chances of that are really low as someone eating to do that would have to get to the band(s) the Streak was using and there is the challange of knowing which way the ship went once it translated out.