Attacking Darius:

Yes, but the GA had to burn through millions... yes, that is millions, of missiles AND drones to do so.

And it took all of that against the MA's SECOND-STRING football team. A severely handicapped second string. They didn't even have full loads of ANY of the weapons that they did have.

And remember what I said upstream, that against Darius the GA's supply train will be cut faster than the ribbon on a teenager's new car?

Oh! And did y'all miss the part that Galton was intentionally set-up to fall?

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cthia wrote:Yes, but the GA had to burn through millions... yes, that is millions, of missiles AND drones to do so.

Cheap for what it bought them. They can do it again. And again. It certainly doesn't cost them the equivalent of the MAlign's investment into Galton/Darius.

And it took all of that against the MA's SECOND-STRING football team. A severely handicapped second string. They didn't even have full loads of ANY of the weapons that they did have.

The Galton commanders seemed to be a little disappointed with what they managed to achieve before their "surrender". I think they were clearly expecting to get a lot more.

And remember what I said upstream, that against Darius the GA's supply train will be cut faster than the ribbon on a teenager's new car?

How? Grand Fleet resupplied several times during the Galton siege without being interrupted by enemy action.

Oh! And did y'all miss the part that Galton was intentionally set-up to fall?

Not that hard. From the MAlign's perspective, ideally Galton's defenses would have destroyed or driven off the first Grand Fleet. Galton would then have been lost to the second Grand Fleet attack.

A 200-years old 2 billion-strong colony with League-plus technology for about 20 GA wallers/carriers is a piss-poor exchange ratio.

tlb wrote:At Darius, the graser torpedoes will be on spider drives and so will not be visible in the same way.
Careful, this might be a leak of something as yet unread by many.

Loren Pechtel wrote:No. The first wave wasn't detected because of it's drive, but because it was disturbing the interplanetary medium. A spider torp would be detected the same way at the same distance.

On what page did you read this? My recollection is that all the long range missiles, including all recon drones (which included the G-torpedoes) were spotted by their wedges. I cannot recall a single case were they were spotted optically.

Actually the defenders at Galton should have mixed the G-torpedoes in with the wave of recon drones, which the attacking force ignored to hide their spotting ability.

I find it very difficult to think that a graser weapon can be spotted optically before it is within range.

cthia wrote:Yes, but the GA had to burn through millions... yes, that is millions, of missiles AND drones to do so.

Exactly. They used a few months of missile production to eliminate decades or centuries of industrial and defense build up. Advantage GA.

(Hell, it'd be a good trade for the GA even if the two industrial bases were the same size. Given how much larger the GA's is millions of missiles to destroy or capture that capability is the bargain of the decade).

tlb wrote:On what page did you read this? My recollection is that all the long range missiles, including all recon drones (which included the G-torpedoes) were spotted by their wedges. I cannot recall a single case were they were spotted optically.

Actually the defenders at Galton should have mixed the G-torpedoes in with the wave of recon drones, which the attacking force ignored to hide their spotting ability.

I find it very difficult to think that a graser weapon can be spotted optically before it is within range.

I don't have the book anymore (read it from the library) so I can't quote page numbers; but my recollection is the relocatable missile pods were coming in ballistic and were detected by the energetic particle "bow shock" they gave off.

Now a graser torp coming in at lower velocity wouldn't have the same kind of "bow shock" that relativistic objects gave off. But still, passing through the tightly space shells of recon drones still puts them them at greatly increased risk of being detected. And the GA would have learned from Galton to bring even more Ghost Rider drones for their next match up with the GA - so they can make the early warning shells denser while making more of them and pushing some further out for increased warning time.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Yes, but the GA had to burn through millions... yes, that is millions, of missiles AND drones to do so.

Exactly. They used a few months of missile production to eliminate decades or centuries of industrial and defense build up. Advantage GA.

(Hell, it'd be a good trade for the GA even if the two industrial bases were the same size. Given how much larger the GA's is millions of missiles to destroy or capture that capability is the bargain of the decade).

It doesn't impress me. Again, it took all of that against an enemy who was low on bullets from the beginning of the match. If it was the Old West, all of Galton's guns essentially had about two rounds in each chamber with no refills.

The GA launched 18,000 missiles at one of the Forts. A Fort that they could see. It took a few more launches to kill it. And again, that was against a Fort that they could see. They cannot see the Lennys.

Pick on me, says the Lenny D.

And remember, there are one hundred of them. And I am no longer expecting any more lip-service about them not being ready.


Do recall, I never said the GA wouldn't win in the end. I simply said that I disagree with the masses on how easy the asses would have it when they attack Darius. The GA was shocked at Darius' defenses. This is not the ignorant SL.

Such a small industry managed to kill more GA ships than the entire SL in a single launch! A severely hamstrung launch. And without all of their toys.

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Jonathan_S wrote:

tlb wrote:On what page did you read this? My recollection is that all the long range missiles, including all recon drones (which included the G-torpedoes) were spotted by their wedges. I cannot recall a single case were they were spotted optically.

Actually the defenders at Galton should have mixed the G-torpedoes in with the wave of recon drones, which the attacking force ignored to hide their spotting ability.

I find it very difficult to think that a graser weapon can be spotted optically before it is within range.

I don't have the book anymore (read it from the library) so I can't quote page numbers; but my recollection is the relocatable missile pods were coming in ballistic and were detected by the energetic particle "bow shock" they gave off.

Now a graser torp coming in at lower velocity wouldn't have the same kind of "bow shock" that relativistic objects gave off. But still, passing through the tightly space shells of recon drones still puts them them at greatly increased risk of being detected. And the GA would have learned from Galton to bring even more Ghost Rider drones for their next match up with the GA - so they can make the early warning shells denser while making more of them and pushing some further out for increased warning time.

At the bottom of page 649 (hardbook).

HMS Imperator
Grand Fleet
Galton System

...


But this was coming in at a much higher velocity, sweeping toward the outermost drone shell at the next best thing to .42 cee, and the only reason the Ghost Riders had seen it was the bow wave of charged particles riding along with it.

cthia wrote:

HMS Imperator
Grand Fleet
Galton System

...


But this was coming in at a much higher velocity, sweeping toward the outermost drone shell at the next best thing to .42 cee, and the only reason the Ghost Riders had seen it was the bow wave of charged particles riding along with it.

We don't know the spider torpedoes will have the same problem. It's possible the bowshock was an effect of the wedge (low-power though as it was) the Hasta was riding on and the torpedo wouldn't have the same problem. But it's far more likely that it's caused by the particle shield in front of the Hasta and that one the torpedo can't avoid if it is to reach 0.42 c.

Of course, it can't reach 0.42 c with just 150 gravities in tactical time. It takes an entire day to reach that high a velocity and would also need five light-hours, which is basically Pluto's orbit, to get to that speed. They need up to 6 hours of lateral acceleration to react to the GF having shifted positions up to a maximum 22 light-minutes of deflection.

So I call firing from the outer Darius system onto the sieging GF not tactically sound. All it takes is one detection sufficiently far away for the GF to transition to alpha and the entire salvo misses. It would take 9 hours to decelerate to zero relative to the star and another 9 hours to come back for a second pass.

A torpedo attack would be therefore much slower. On one hand, that does minimise the bowshock, because it'll disturb the IPM and solar wind much less. On the other hand, it makes interception far easier because it gives the GF more time to acquire the targets before they come crashing down on the fleet.

Honor's tactic of making a shell of drones outside of a shell of LACs outside of a shell of escorts is exactly what I predicted months ago in this thread. She erred in just how far the drone shell had to be out to catch the Hastas and that cost her 3 capital ships. But now she's learned and not a single Hasta attack succeeded after the first one. And also, the torpedoes will need to be coming much slower.

cthia wrote:It doesn't impress me. Again, it took all of that against an enemy who was low on bullets from the beginning of the match. If it was the Old West, all of Galton's guns essentially had about two rounds in each chamber with no refills.

The Galton system had something like 200,000 Hastas to carry Cataphracts and they had no shortage of improved Cataphracts. I would not call them low on bullets. They didn't have the best toys, but of those they had, they had plenty.

The Galton system is also said to have a bigger military industry than Darius had at this same time. I'd expect Darius to continue expanding, but since the population there wasn't militaristic in nature, I don't expect Darius to match Galton's output for another century.

The GA launched 18,000 missiles at one of the Forts. A Fort that they could see. It took a few more launches to kill it. And again, that was against a Fort that they could see. They cannot see the Lennys.

Pick on me, says the Lenny D.

And remember, there are one hundred of them. And I am no longer expecting any more lip-service about them not being ready.

No, there aren't a hundred of them. Let's go over all aspects here.

Honor fired 18k missiles at a fort. So what? She brought fifty million missiles. It's said she fired millions of missiles at the Galton's full defences to demolish them. How much is that, 10 to 12% of her inventory?

Even if she had had to fire all her missiles and even if half of them had been lost due to fleet train losses, the GA's industrial base is intact, while the sieged system's isn't. The GA can recover much more quickly than the defenders can after such an attack.

The forts could be seen. That's what forts are for. And even if they were stealthed before, once they bring up their bubblewalls, they aren't any more.

Leonard Detweilers can't be seen... well, we'll see (pun intended). The bowshock discussion threw a wrench into the whole thing. We've been assuming the torpedoes have the same acceleration as an LD because the spider drive's acceleration rate depends on the hull length, but we don't know for sure the acceleration is the same. It could be higher or lower. But we do know for sure that the LD can sustain 150 gravities only (250 is only for a short duration with the crew in gravity seats). So those LDs can't reach any appreciable velocity for an attack run: it takes then 3 hours to reach 0.05c. So I'm going to call the bowshock detection irrelevant.

That only leaves the LDs with the ability to sneak up and attack from stealth. What are they going to do with that? Even if they had 100 ships, that wouldn't take nearly enough of the GF with them. And even if it did, the GF would be back and the MAN would be short 90 LDs.

And they can't have 100 LDs because the industry to build those ships isn't there. The Galton system had produced 16 SD(P)s since they'd become aware of the existence of the design, for a total of 60 capital ships. And this was in a militaristic system, with an industry wholly geared towards the confrontation, using a well-proven technology (impellers). Spider ships are a much newer one and the Darius system doesn't seem to have the matching industry.

I'll concede that the MAN probably has enough qualified personnel. It was said to be the newest navy in existence, but we can probably safely assume that they had enough transplants from the Galton Navy to hit the ground running. But none of them have experience with a spider-drive capital ship, so they're all learning on the job.

Honor had to fire 18k to kill a fort. So what? That fort was 10 light-minutes downrange (anyone notice how they can now hit from that far?) and had wedges and sidewalls. The LD has neither and is likely going to be much closer. I'd expect 18k missiles to kill 100 LDs, if they can be found. So if Honor has to fire 1 million missiles through the system to saturate and find targets, she can and still have fired only 2% of her ammo.

One more thing: if this takes to happen, do expect the SL to participate too. Then we're not talking about a Grand Fleet of 250 or 500 ships. We'd be talking about a Grand Unified Fleet with 1000 SD(P)s and CLACs and bringing a quarter of a billion missiles.

Do recall, I never said the GA wouldn't win in the end. I simply said that I disagree with the masses on how easy the asses would have it when they attack Darius. The GA was shocked at Darius' defenses. This is not the ignorant SL.

I don't think we've disagreed with that. The fact that Galton had SD(P)s in the first place when no one else in the Galaxy does is a testament to that fact.

Such a small industry managed to kill more GA ships than the entire SL in a single launch! A severely hamstrung launch. And without all of their toys.
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It wasn't small. It was an entire system's output for a decade.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The forts could be seen. That's what forts are for. And even if they were stealthed before, once they bring up their bubblewalls, they aren't any more.

And the shipyards are similarly hard to hide, and those are legit military targets. As discussed before LDs can't last long (less than a year or two) if their support infrastructure is turned to rubble behind them.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Leonard Detweilers can't be seen... well, we'll see (pun intended). The bowshock discussion threw a wrench into the whole thing. We've been assuming the torpedoes have the same acceleration as an LD because the spider drive's acceleration rate depends on the hull length, but we don't know for sure the acceleration is the same. It could be higher or lower. But we do know for sure that the LD can sustain 150 gravities only (250 is only for a short duration with the crew in gravity seats). So those LDs can't reach any appreciable velocity for an attack run: it takes then 3 hours to reach 0.05c. So I'm going to call the bowshock detection irrelevant.

True that we don't know the exact acceleration of the graser torp. However we're given a ballpark.

Mission of Honor wrote:a graser torpedo which used its own variant of the spider drive. It was a large and cumbersome weapon, with the same trilateral symmetry as the Shark-class ships which had launched it, and for the same reasons.[snip]
For all its size, it was also a slow weapon. It was simply impossible to fit a spider drive capable of more than a few hundred gravities’ acceleration into something small enough to make a practical weapon.

A "few hundred" probably means less than 400g; which might make it a little bit quicker than full emergency acceleration for a spider ship; but not much.