Post League Eridani

Brigade XO wrote:

Imagine parking an Lenny Det or even a Shark on the least time approch to a system from any regular major trading partner or wormhole bridge. Your back to the analog of a submarine lurking outside a harbor (or the Pillers of Hercules) and puffing out a gt variation of a silent running acoustical torpedo for a head on capital energy weapon shot. Probably going to burn through such things as the power plant/reactors and Boom.

You can just dump them out of a freighter. They have demonstrated an ability to run for month at low power. So they wait for the right wedge signature to head out of the system towards the limit. Sadly, this ship suffers a catastrophic reactor failure with no survivors.

Basically the equivalent of a CAPTOR mine.

kzt wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:The Lenny Dets would seem to only really be useful for sneak attacks, like Oyster Bay, and those have really limited utility.

There is always a use for surprise.

David has very carefully ignored the obvious implication of a weapon that can get to within energy range. For example, that Mantie fleet that was parked out at the junction with all their wedges down? Consider 100 graser torpedoes dropped off from a freighter...

Jonathan_S wrote:And you should be able to use them for anything submarines have classically tried to do - including in fleet engagements where you try to maneuver to get the enemy fleet to run into a patrolling submarine line.

Also graser torps have enough range than you can hang back beyond the hyper limit and should be able to steer a torp for a down the throat shot at any ship heading towards the hyper limit anywhere even semi-near you - you don't need to restrict your targets to stationary ones despite your weapons being slower than the targets if the attack geometry is right.

Yes they seem closer to snipers crossed with mobile minefields than conventional ships of the wall, but there are still lots of ways to use them, whether or not in conjunction with conventional forces, to give your enemies a bad day. (To the extent that the gloves have come off and you're willing to expose that there are unseen attackers marauding around)

IOW, just like Harrington the Lenny Dets can launch out of the RZ too. RZ = Reconnaissance Zone to the MA. LOL

Wouldn't it be an interesting twist of fate if one of the things the Dets take out is the flawed new system Manticore has of detecting the Lennys? Oops.

"Take out the detection system."

"Roger, Operation Blind."

How much info has David allowed to leak out of the WDB? Is the detection system "ship based" or "system based?"

Basically --
We have a situation where
(1) SL Protectorate systems, SL-corporate "managed" systems and independent/quasi-independent systems no longer have a SLN detachment to act as the local "Cop on the Beat"
(2) Grand Alliance does not want to become the new Godfather
(3) Independent/x-protectorate systems need to look at/plan for their own security -- think Belgium/Denmark or Switzerland -- either try to appear small and inoffensive, or appear not worth the trouble/risk/cost of conquest.
As noted in other threads, there may be some old scores to even, or there may be new, regional alliances developed.

Only time (and RFC) will tell

-- Stewart

stewart wrote:Basically --
We have a situation where
(1) SL Protectorate systems, SL-corporate "managed" systems and independent/quasi-independent systems no longer have a SLN detachment to act as the local "Cop on the Beat"
(2) Grand Alliance does not want to become the new Godfather
(3) Independent/x-protectorate systems need to look at/plan for their own security -- think Belgium/Denmark or Switzerland -- either try to appear small and inoffensive, or appear not worth the trouble/risk/cost of conquest.
As noted in other threads, there may be some old scores to even, or there may be new, regional alliances developed.

Only time (and RFC) will tell.

I expect the GA and the Andermani will run "friendship" patrols through the Verge as a hedge against piracy and unfriendly actions by interstellar corporations or unrepentant Frontier Fleet units.

tlb wrote:
Only time (and RFC) will tell.

I expect the GA and the Andermani will run "friendship" patrols through the Verge as a hedge against piracy and unfriendly actions by interstellar corporations or unrepentant Frontier Fleet units.[/quote]
Iirc, there are millions of cubic light years with many thousands of occupied planets, much of which are months travel from the haven sector. So good luck with that unless they plan on a ‘peace dividend’ that requires a ten times larger navy then when they were at war.

stewart wrote:Only time (and RFC) will tell.

tlb wrote:I expect the GA and the Andermani will run "friendship" patrols through the Verge as a hedge against piracy and unfriendly actions by interstellar corporations or unrepentant Frontier Fleet units.

kzt wrote:Iirc, there are millions of cubic light years with many thousands of occupied planets, much of which are months travel from the haven sector. So good luck with that unless they plan on a ‘peace dividend’ that requires a ten times larger navy then when they were at war.

I did not expect you to be one who would mess up the quote structure.

You are right that this will most likely be for those systems closest to them, unless there is a strategic reason to send an occasional showing of the flag. But Andermani space and the Talbot Quadrant have neighbors that can be visited without straining the budget. Certainly the planets that Firebrand incited will need to be monitored.

tlb wrote:I look upon this weapon as something like Mistletoe, a somewhat stealthy weapon which depended on the opponent not recognizing it as a threat. As with Mistletoe (or the stealth homing missiles used by Masada) there is a final attack phase, that obvious. Is that phase really necessary? Could a recon drone carry a laser head bomb directly into attack range, without the final sprint phase?

Mistletoe does that. That's how they killed the Moriarty control centers. There's no sprint phase, the Ghost Rider drone just gets within 50,000 km and the strapped on laserhead goes *boom*.

The issue with the the stealth homing missiles used by Masada is that their passive sensors apparently weren't good enough to do the necessary targeting so once they fired up their active seekers near the end of their attack run they were easily detectable and were slow enough to be easy targets for any warship's point defense. But those didn't have a sprint phase (missile or CM final stage) either.

Unlike them Mistletoe was apparently capable enough (though unclear if that was fully autonomous capability or it they were being remote controlled via their FTL links) to target and fire their strapped on laserhead without ever using active sensors.
However it's also not clear if even Mistletoe is stealthy enough to get within 50,000 km (improved laserhead standoff range) of an alert warship target without being detected. (And like the Masadan missiles if detected their speed and accel is likely too low to be much challenge to decent point defense)

Though even Hasta may have issues getting through a modern warship's defenses unless used in massive numbers. The tradeoff of the surprisingly short flight time of the sprint phase CM/missile drive stage is that it can't add very much velocity and it's not clear the recon drone drive will have built up the kind of base vector an MDM can achieve. So while the targets are going to be popping up relatively nearby, they're not likely to be moving that fast, so the point defense gets many more shots at easier targets than what any GA warship's defenses have been built for. Hasta seems like it'd do better smashing up poorly defended industrial or resource stations than it would going after alert warships.

tlb wrote:I look upon this weapon as something like Mistletoe, a somewhat stealthy weapon which depended on the opponent not recognizing it as a threat. As with Mistletoe (or the stealth homing missiles used by Masada) there is a final attack phase, that obvious. Is that phase really necessary? Could a recon drone carry a laser head bomb directly into attack range, without the final sprint phase?

Jonathan_S wrote:Mistletoe does that. That's how they killed the Moriarty control centers. There's no sprint phase, the Ghost Rider drone just gets within 50,000 km and the strapped on laserhead goes *boom*.

The issue with the the stealth homing missiles used by Masada is that their passive sensors apparently weren't good enough to do the necessary targeting so once they fired up their active seekers near the end of their attack run they were easily detectable and were slow enough to be easy targets for any warship's point defense. But those didn't have a sprint phase (missile or CM final stage) either.

Unlike them Mistletoe was apparently capable enough (though unclear if that was fully autonomous capability or it they were being remote controlled via their FTL links) to target and fire their strapped on laserhead without ever using active sensors.
However it's also not clear if even Mistletoe is stealthy enough to get within 50,000 km (improved laserhead standoff range) of an alert warship target without being detected. (And like the Masadan missiles if detected their speed and accel is likely too low to be much challenge to decent point defense)

Though even Hasta may have issues getting through a modern warship's defenses unless used in massive numbers. The tradeoff of the surprisingly short flight time of the sprint phase CM/missile drive stage is that it can't add very much velocity and it's not clear the recon drone drive will have built up the kind of base vector an MDM can achieve. So while the targets are going to be popping up relatively nearby, they're not likely to be moving that fast, so the point defense gets many more shots at easier targets than what any GA warship's defenses have been built for. Hasta seems like it'd do better smashing up poorly defended industrial or resource stations than it would going after alert warships.

You are correct, I misremembered what Theisman had said in At All Costs, chapter 58:

We should have realized that sooner or later they were going to strap weapons onto their recon drones. They've demonstrated they can operate them deep inside our defended areas with virtual impunity, and they probably took a certain pleasure from applying a variant of the same technique Saint-Just used to destroy Elizabeth's yacht in Yeltsin. The bad news is how close they can get them; the good news—such as it is—is that, even so, they can't get them all the way into attack range in stealth. They still have to get into range to execute their attacks, and not even Manty stealth systems can hide them during the last hundred thousand kilometers or so of their runs. They don't have the sort of acceleration rates missiles do, either, and to be used properly, they have to attack virtually from rest, or else they can't loiter until the proper moment. So they have relatively low closing velocities when they come in, and they can be engaged by counter-missiles and standard point defense, now that we know they're out there. Our intercept probabilities won't be good, especially given how little warning we'll have between the moment their drives peak and the moment they reach attack range, but we can probably cope with the threat.

That is what lead me astray. But when attacking Moriarty (or any target not accelerating, for which there is an approach vector), they could have gone ballistic for the last 100,000 km and never been detected before detonation.

kzt wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:

Imagine parking an Lenny Det or even a Shark on the least time approch to a system from any regular major trading partner or wormhole bridge. Your back to the analog of a submarine lurking outside a harbor (or the Pillers of Hercules) and puffing out a gt variation of a silent running acoustical torpedo for a head on capital energy weapon shot. Probably going to burn through such things as the power plant/reactors and Boom.

You can just dump them out of a freighter. They have demonstrated an ability to run for month at low power. So they wait for the right wedge signature to head out of the system towards the limit. Sadly, this ship suffers a catastrophic reactor failure with no survivors.

Basically the equivalent of a CAPTOR mine.

The advantage of using a Lenny Det or Shark instead of just dropping the GT to hang around and kill incoming (or outgoing) starships is that using the spider drive mothership lets you have a massivly better passive sensor capasity and people in the loop to make decisions. What is the incomming ship? is it a warship (probably a good target). Is it a freighter flagged with a system in the RF or one that is going to be a RF aquistion target- might want to pass. Is it a RF warship---pass.
Is it a liner....well, not likely unless your patrol station is off a major system, and killing liners is going to get a lot more attention- very unwanted attention- than strike at some merchant ship. Much more likely to draw a multiple warship response and then the safest thing to do would be leave before they arrive. Why? because starting a fight with more than a single warship might be bad for your health and they might get lucky and notice something that would lead to them destoying- or worse damaging and capturing- your spider.

Depends on your intentions. One problem is that every time there is going to be an "invisible" ship killing/ambushing others, you feed the need for so many star systems (SEM, PRH, SL, IAE etc) to try harder and more inventively to find the same people who struck both SEM and Grayson.

tlb wrote:

stewart wrote:Only time (and RFC) will tell.

tlb wrote:I expect the GA and the Andermani will run "friendship" patrols through the Verge as a hedge against piracy and unfriendly actions by interstellar corporations or unrepentant Frontier Fleet units.

kzt wrote:Iirc, there are millions of cubic light years with many thousands of occupied planets, much of which are months travel from the haven sector. So good luck with that unless they plan on a ‘peace dividend’ that requires a ten times larger navy then when they were at war.

I did not expect you to be one who would mess up the quote structure.

You are right that this will most likely be for those systems closest to them, unless there is a strategic reason to send an occasional showing of the flag. But Andermani space and the Talbot Quadrant have neighbors that can be visited without straining the budget. Certainly the planets that Firebrand incited will need to be monitored.

Sorry, editing on my phone.