ThinksMarkedly wrote:Jonathan_S wrote:OTOH we're led to believe the LD is a pod-layer (in additional to being able to internally launch graser torps) - so there seems little reason for it to spend much time towing pods around in the first place. It can just keep them on its pod rails and thus fully protected by all the fancy stealth mechanisms it's equipped with until just before it's ready to launch.
Actually, pod layers do want to roll pods and keep them tractored, then chaind, for a massive alpha launch. That's what Honor did and Kuzak failed to do at the Battle of Manticore.
And from the earliest pods back in SVW, no one saw them towed. Maybe at the time no one was looking. And maybe with an active impeller, the signal-to-noise is incredibly bad, so you can't see the tractors (like a flashlight with the Sun as a backdrop). But I really think the tractors themselves are not detectable at any reasonable distance.
But as I said, the pods themselves may be. As you said, the MAlign wouldn't want to fit the pods with first-class stealth technology, since it's hella expensive and because the pods are being disposed of. The chance that an enemy could get their hands on some expended pods is too high. So a pod that is feeding power to the missile capacitors, can it be detected at a range?
Please also note that an answer "yes" also implies that system defence pod shoals can be detected at a distance. So an invader can make a surveillance map of where those pods are located before attempting to invade. If they have some area denial weapon that could detonate those pods, they're half-way to conquering the system.
I have never understood why tractors aren't visible. If these things are powerful enough to drag LACs through hyper, it seems that they would burn very bright. Of course, I never understood how ships can actually hyper and manage to hold onto something it is towing. Honor had that massive alpha launch tractored to the hull while she performed two jumps? David's compensation field actually works. It compensates for a lot of disbelief. At least it is reasonable.