What next after To End in Fire

weekstonz wrote:The GF would have had far more resources at disposal, a knowledge of enemy stealth ships, so they'd be watching the hyperlimit and far beyond it like hawks. Those Ghost-class ships would need to be inserted far out, at least a light-week.

kzt wrote:No, the Ghosts come in on cargo vessels. No signature at all.

Strangely, on rereading that passage; the cargo ship that delivered the Ghosts, did so at such a distance that they believed that it would not be observed by the Manticoran sensor net. Why do it that way and not the way the Silver Bullets were delivered: from a cargo ship coming to make a wormhole transit?

tlb wrote:

weekstonz wrote:The GF would have had far more resources at disposal, a knowledge of enemy stealth ships, so they'd be watching the hyperlimit and far beyond it like hawks. Those Ghost-class ships would need to be inserted far out, at least a light-week.

kzt wrote:No, the Ghosts come in on cargo vessels. No signature at all.

Strangely, on rereading that passage; the cargo ship that delivered the Ghosts, did so at such a distance that they believed that it would not be observed by the Manticoran sensor net. Why do it that way and not the way the Silver Bullets were delivered: from a cargo ship coming to make a wormhole transit?

It could be a few reasons - The MBS junction has 5-6x the traffic of the Beowulf terminus - it also has 5-10x the defenses of the terminus. In short, dumping stuff would be easier at Beowulf than it would be in Manticore because there are fewer people/systems watching.

tlb wrote:

kzt wrote:No, the Ghosts come in on cargo vessels. No signature at all.

Strangely, on rereading that passage; the cargo ship that delivered the Ghosts, did so at such a distance that they believed that it would not be observed by the Manticoran sensor net. Why do it that way and not the way the Silver Bullets were delivered: from a cargo ship coming to make a wormhole transit?

Wallaby was on her way to make a wormhole transit

Storm From The Shadows wrote:Wallaby had made her alpha translation thirty minutes ago, and she was still several hours away from the wormhole junction she'd ostensibly come here to transit. At this range, even a fully conventional ship Chameleon's size would almost certainly have been invisible even to Manticoran sensor arrays (assuming its skipper was smart enough not to bring up his wedge, at any rate).

And it doesn't say that the freighter wasn't observable by the Manticore sensor net - certainly her hyper emergence would have been seen.
And at freighter accel, being several (5-10?) hours from (zero-zero intercept with) the Junction probably only puts her 150-630 million km (8.3 - 35 LM) out. Certainly if her wedge was up she'd still be tracked, but even if she was coasting with wedge down a 4 mton freight was probably still being tracked by the sensor net.

However ~50,000 ton (~80x smaller) frigate-sized ships slipping away from her without wedges up were expected to avoid notice from the sensor net at that range (even if they hadn't been ultra-stealthy Ghosts)



However it would be reasonable to take a more cautious approach to slipping Ghosts into Manticore than Silver Bullets into Beowulf. For one thing the Ghosts are a lot larger (so easier to see as they exit) but also their size made it sound like it was a slower and more ticklish process to launch them than it would have been to drop a bunch of effectively oversized RDs. You'd want to be sure nobody would be nearby to see you open your cargo hatches while drifting along - and if the process requires them to be open longer then you'd want to be in a more isolated spot when you begin.

Theemile wrote:Why risk a q-ship - you just need to retrofit a standard freighter with tons of (hidden) passive sensor arrays.

Isn't that what a q-ship is?

Theemile wrote:Why risk a q-ship - you just need to retrofit a standard freighter with tons of (hidden) passive sensor arrays.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Isn't that what a q-ship is?

Normally a Q-ship has offensive weapons. The Peeps tried putting military sensors in cargo ships before the war officially started, but the Manties declared that any ship found like that would be permanently banned from its space and its wormholes.

tlb wrote:Normally a Q-ship has offensive weapons. The Peeps tried putting military sensors in cargo ships before the war officially started, but the Manties declared that any ship found like that would be permanently banned from its space and its wormholes.

Ok, then I wasn't referring to a Q-ship. I was thinking of a freighter or courier with enhanced sensors.

Jonathan_S wrote:However it would be reasonable to take a more cautious approach to slipping Ghosts into Manticore than Silver Bullets into Beowulf. For one thing the Ghosts are a lot larger (so easier to see as they exit) but also their size made it sound like it was a slower and more ticklish process to launch them than it would have been to drop a bunch of effectively oversized RDs. You'd want to be sure nobody would be nearby to see you open your cargo hatches while drifting along - and if the process requires them to be open longer then you'd want to be in a more isolated spot when you begin.

Why not make transit at a distance only slightly longer than normal and drop the Ghosts then, as long as there was no one in optical range? There are not sensors that will show if the cargo doors are open and the Ghosts will not show up on anything that Manticore has. I do not see a good reason to force the recon party to travel an unnecessary number of days to get to their job.

This might make sense at Yeltsin, if the ship did not have any cargo to drop off; because then there was no reason for a freighter to appear.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:Normally a Q-ship has offensive weapons. The Peeps tried putting military sensors in cargo ships before the war officially started, but the Manties declared that any ship found like that would be permanently banned from its space and its wormholes.

Ok, then I wasn't referring to a Q-ship. I was thinking of a freighter or courier with enhanced sensors.

Ah - a spy ship. Otherwise known as a Russian fishing trawler.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:However it would be reasonable to take a more cautious approach to slipping Ghosts into Manticore than Silver Bullets into Beowulf. For one thing the Ghosts are a lot larger (so easier to see as they exit) but also their size made it sound like it was a slower and more ticklish process to launch them than it would have been to drop a bunch of effectively oversized RDs. You'd want to be sure nobody would be nearby to see you open your cargo hatches while drifting along - and if the process requires them to be open longer then you'd want to be in a more isolated spot when you begin.

Why not make transit at a distance only slightly longer than normal and drop the Ghosts then, as long as there was no one in optical range? There are not sensors that will show if the cargo doors are open and the Ghosts will not show up on anything that Manticore has. I do not see a good reason to force the recon party to travel an unnecessary number of days to get to their job.

This might make sense at Yeltsin, if the ship did not have any cargo to drop off; because then there was no reason for a freighter to appear.

The freighter appeared within "several hours" flight time of the Junction -- meaning it couldn't have been much more than 7 hours from Manticore.

Even at the low speed the Ghosts were going that's only going to take a few days -- which isn't much compared to how long they're going to spend scouting the system.
(My assumptions were 100g accel, zero-zero course, and a max velocity of 0.1c. Meaning to cover 7 light-hours they'd accelerate for 8.5 hours, coast for 2.6 days, and decelerate for 8.5 hours; so 3.3 days total)


The ships that had the sucky insertion were the Sharks - which were far too large to be inserted by freighter and hand to hyper in IIRC light-weeks out from the system; then slowly creep their way to Manticore-A and Manticore-B.