?

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:No, no I can't imagine that. A Mycroft platform just orbits - it doesn't need a powerful drive.

An with the drive down a Spider drive is no stealthier than a wedge.

Now the stealth coating the MAlign developed and put on their Ghosts (and presumably on the Sharks, g-torps, Wraiths, etc.) applied to a Mycroft platform might make it a bit harder to detect. But that has nothing to do with the drive -- totally different tech.

Not a more powerful drive. A stealthier drive.

My point being that they don't move about, they orbit. They don't need any drive at all. (Beyond maybe, maybe some ion or cold gas thrusters for station keeping)

This is like asking if putting a B-2's stealthy buried jet engine on a hot air balloon would make it stealthier. No it wouldn't, because no engine is already stealthier than a stealth engine.

Adding the unnecessary drive would make them a lot larger, require more power, a far more powerful (and thus hotter and harder to hide from IR) power source -- and they don't need one.

They just orbit, stealthily, without any drive emissions.

tlb wrote:From Mission of Honor:

Chapter 28 wrote:All of that was true,and all of it constituted indisputably significant disadvantages. But the spider also had one overwhelming advantage: it was effectively undetectable by any sensor system deployed by any navy (including the MAN itself) at any range much beyond a single light-second. Even for the MAN, it was damnably hard to detect; for someone who didn't even know what to look for, the task was about as close to outright impossible as challenges came. For all intents and purposes, a spider-drive ship's drive field was invisible, and it was actually the drive signature of a ship for which virtually all long-range passive sensors searched.

The interesting question here is whether this is the omniscient narrator speaking or whether it's the musings of a MAlign member. There's a huge difference when it comes to "any sensor deployed by any navy:" if it's the omniscient narrator, that implies any sensor, period, which would include those the GA has (though the wording restricts it to "deployed" so a sensor that the RMN had yet to deploy wouldn't count). But if it is just Albrecht's musings (I think it was him we were following in this passage), then that means "to the best of his and the Alignment Intelligence's knowledge."

tlb wrote:From Mission of Honor:

Chapter 28 wrote:All of that was true,and all of it constituted indisputably significant disadvantages. But the spider also had one overwhelming advantage: it was effectively undetectable by any sensor system deployed by any navy (including the MAN itself) at any range much beyond a single light-second. Even for the MAN, it was damnably hard to detect; for someone who didn't even know what to look for, the task was about as close to outright impossible as challenges came. For all intents and purposes, a spider-drive ship's drive field was invisible, and it was actually the drive signature of a ship for which virtually all long-range passive sensors searched.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The interesting question here is whether this is the omniscient narrator speaking or whether it's the musings of a MAlign member. There's a huge difference when it comes to "any sensor deployed by any navy:" if it's the omniscient narrator, that implies any sensor, period, which would include those the GA has (though the wording restricts it to "deployed" so a sensor that the RMN had yet to deploy wouldn't count). But if it is just Albrecht's musings (I think it was him we were following in this passage), then that means "to the best of his and the Alignment Intelligence's knowledge."

I agree in a sense, but only the Malign would know to look for repetitive tractor beams as a sign of motion. The sensitive sensors of other navies are going to search for wedge drives. We will have to see what the author says: the real omniscient narrator.

tlb wrote:I agree in a sense, but only the Malign would know to look for repetitive tractor beams as a sign of motion. The sensitive sensors of other navies are going to search for wedge drives. We will have to see what the author says: the real omniscient narrator.

I agree, but only on the intent of the sensing. No one programs a search for something one doesn't know about.

What we don't know is if some sensor or processing algorithm out there has an unexpected side-effect that is capable of detecting it. That will still be one of those "huh, that's funny" moments because the computers won't know what they have detected.

Of course, since Oyster Bay, the RMN and GSN have poured over all the data that was recorded in their systems to try and detect a pattern. So even if the passage above was from the omniscient narrator, it was only true as of the launch of Oyster Bay. Whether they have succeeded or not, we won't know for a while. My guess is that they're unfortunately going to need a few more data points.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:I agree in a sense, but only the Malign would know to look for repetitive tractor beams as a sign of motion. The sensitive sensors of other navies are going to search for wedge drives. We will have to see what the author says: the real omniscient narrator.

I agree, but only on the intent of the sensing. No one programs a search for something one doesn't know about.

What we don't know is if some sensor or processing algorithm out there has an unexpected side-effect that is capable of detecting it. That will still be one of those "huh, that's funny" moments because the computers won't know what they have detected.

Of course, since Oyster Bay, the RMN and GSN have poured over all the data that was recorded in their systems to try and detect a pattern. So even if the passage above was from the omniscient narrator, it was only true as of the launch of Oyster Bay. Whether they have succeeded or not, we won't know for a while. My guess is that they're unfortunately going to need a few more data points.

I have a vague recollection of a post from "runsforcelery" (aka David Weber) that implied that the Manticore gravity sensors "noise" filters had filtered out the spider drive fluctuations before the data was recorded.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:No, no I can't imagine that. A Mycroft platform just orbits - it doesn't need a powerful drive.

An with the drive down a Spider drive is no stealthier than a wedge.

Now the stealth coating the MAlign developed and put on their Ghosts (and presumably on the Sharks, g-torps, Wraiths, etc.) applied to a Mycroft platform might make it a bit harder to detect. But that has nothing to do with the drive -- totally different tech.

Not a more powerful drive. A stealthier drive.

Jonathan_S wrote:My point being that they don't move about, they orbit. They don't need any drive at all. (Beyond maybe, maybe some ion or cold gas thrusters for station keeping)

That fact is partly what makes them vulnerable. They are tethered to the planet, and that makes looking for them easier. And I imagine their station keeping functions aided in locating them.

But you missed my point. I said the spider drive technology would be a welcome addition to the GA's platform technology. The MA has shown that the platforms are vulnerable. They are either going to have to untether them from the planet or orbit, or acquire some defenses for them or both. Untethering them from orbit would work even better, or more assuredly.

Jonathan_S wrote:This is like asking if putting a B-2's stealthy buried jet engine on a hot air balloon would make it stealthier. No it wouldn't, because no engine is already stealthier than a stealth engine.

I see your point and I agree. For the most part. I have been making the same point in several other threads. There is nothing stealthier than a ship with wedges down. An attacking navy cannot see what a system's Home Fleet's order of battle consists of until such time as those wedges are brought online. Same point I made for the MAN when someone said they can not keep their spider drives online constantly. Though we don't know for certain that the MTBF is anywhere similar, not even the GA can detect a spider drive fort or ship -- even if the drive is offline -- when it hypers in-system from that range. And a spider drive should give no indictations it is coming online, unlike wedges.

Now I need to reread TEiF since Honor wanted to fire on the forts as soon as she entered the system and she shouldn't have been able to see them before they brought their wedges online since they were orbiting the planet.

Jonathan_S wrote:Adding the unnecessary drive would make them a lot larger, require more power, a far more powerful (and thus hotter and harder to hide from IR) power source -- and they don't need one.

Maybe it would make them a lot larger. That is not written in stone. Remember, the GA still has access to their own technology that the MAN would love to have. The GA may be able to make it smaller. But even if that isn't the case, a smaller size should not preempt stealth in this case since the platforms are not ship deployed. Size should be secondary to stealth. Especially since it has been proven that they are vulnerable.

Jonathan_S wrote:They just orbit, stealthily, without any drive emissions.

If they are flaming datum they still won't have any emissions. Nor will they continue to orbit.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:My point being that they don't move about, they orbit. They don't need any drive at all. (Beyond maybe, maybe some ion or cold gas thrusters for station keeping)

That fact is partly what makes them vulnerable. They are tethered to the planet, and that makes looking for them easier. And I imagine their station keeping functions aided in locating them.

But you missed my point. I said the spider drive technology would be a welcome addition to the GA's platform technology. The MA has shown that the platforms are vulnerable. They are either going to have to untether them from the planet or orbit, or acquire some defenses for them or both. Untethering them from orbit would work even better, or more assuredly.

Actually they orbit the star -- generally at a vast distance from the planet. The nearest only needs to be within 3 or so lightminutes of the planet -- so basically no closer than Mars ever gets to Earth.

Though okay, maybe having them maneuver around under spider drive would make them even harder to track down, because they'd keep moving so you couldn't get consistent cross bearings. That might add to their ability to avoid getting tracked down - even though it's not a direct augmentation of their stealth signature reduction (more a complement to it)

But, as I'd said, adding the drive would make them much larger, require a far more powerful power system, which would require them to reject a lot of waste heat, meaning they'd now have the same kind of directionally weak stealth that a Ghost has - having to beam waste heat out in one direction. Oh, and the extra power draw and use of an active drive likely also reduces their endurance and require more frequent refueling and service -- activities that, in themselves, may expose the platforms' locations and courses.

And the only time we've seen Mycroft platforms located they were found by tracing their FTL com emissions (in what sounded like a multi-week search) - their station keeping drive, if any, wasn't what gave them away.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:This is like asking if putting a B-2's stealthy buried jet engine on a hot air balloon would make it stealthier. No it wouldn't, because no engine is already stealthier than a stealth engine.

I see your point and I agree. For the most part. I have been making the same point in several other threads. There is nothing stealthier than a ship with wedges down. An attacking navy cannot see what a system's Home Fleet's order of battle consists of until such time as those wedges are brought online. Same point I made for the MAN when someone said they can not keep their spider drives online constantly. Though we don't know for certain that the MTBF is anywhere similar, not even the GA can detect a spider drive fort or ship -- even if the drive is offline -- when it hypers in-system from that range. And a spider drive should give no indictations it is coming online, unlike wedges.

Actually the text explicitly says that spider drives are most detectable when they come online "the spider’s signature flares as it comes up [...] The odds against anyone spotting it would still be enormous, but even so, they’d be a hell of a lot worse than the chance of anyone aboard Bogey Two noticing us if we just keep quietly coasting along." [MoH]

That's still a lot less noticeable than a wedge coming up, but a spider drive appears to at its most noticeable when it come up (activates) -- though, like anything, do it range helps hide that flare. So if you do need to bring the spider drive up better to do so before the enemy gets close.

penny wrote:Now I need to reread TEiF since Honor wanted to fire on the forts as soon as she entered the system and she shouldn't have been able to see them before they brought their wedges online since they were orbiting the planet.

She could see them because they were orbiting the planet. A fort, quite by definition, is defending something and must be in proximity of that which it is defending. Knowing it must be there, it isn't very difficult to detect them.

I also don't think forts attempt to be stealthy at all because there's no point. Once they begin firing, they'll be visible. No fort is going to sneak in an attack on an unsuspecting invader, because by the time the invader has reached energy range of the fort, they'll have had hours or days of recon drone flight around the target that the fort is supposedly defending. Forts aren't tactically mobile (if they were, they'd be called "ships" not "forts"), so even if they were a million km out from the planet and hiding, they'd have been found by then. I'd also question the tactic of moving stealth assets to ambush an invader once they've come close -- that means you've already lost all your visible defences, which have to be the significant, without using those stealth assets.

So if the forts weren't trying to be stealthy in the first place, there's no reason to hide their heat signatures. Not to mention that forts are also a deterrent and deterrents need to be visible to deter anyone.

Forts do have some mobility but that is both mostly station-keeping and ability to move around for maintenance or other reasons. The Junction forts for the MWHJ rotate duty, which I had taken to mean that they repositioned when coming off a week to a month or so of being on-station and then changing the guard so they could be off line.

Having a steathed for planetary defense sound great but what do you do when you have to rotate crew and/or do resupply? The shuttles and cargo lighters would also have to be stealthed which would be interesting for Astro Control. There would be a bunch of "restricted" areas in the navigable areas around the planet that would highlight that something was there that someone didn't want anyone going near. Then there is the movement of people that would entail. Sure, the shuttle's (at least) would be leaving from the military areas of your orbital station but that would be good blocks of people coming and going at regular intervals not associated with ship movements.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:Now I need to reread TEiF since Honor wanted to fire on the forts as soon as she entered the system and she shouldn't have been able to see them before they brought their wedges online since they were orbiting the planet.

She could see them because they were orbiting the planet. A fort, quite by definition, is defending something and must be in proximity of that which it is defending. Knowing it must be there, it isn't very difficult to detect them.

I also don't think forts attempt to be stealthy at all because there's no point. Once they begin firing, they'll be visible. No fort is going to sneak in an attack on an unsuspecting invader, because by the time the invader has reached energy range of the fort, they'll have had hours or days of recon drone flight around the target that the fort is supposedly defending. Forts aren't tactically mobile (if they were, they'd be called "ships" not "forts"), so even if they were a million km out from the planet and hiding, they'd have been found by then. I'd also question the tactic of moving stealth assets to ambush an invader once they've come close -- that means you've already lost all your visible defences, which have to be the significant, without using those stealth assets.

So if the forts weren't trying to be stealthy in the first place, there's no reason to hide their heat signatures. Not to mention that forts are also a deterrent and deterrents need to be visible to deter anyone.

It should be impossible to see anything orbiting the planet with wedges down. That is the entire point that Jonathan made upstream where I agree. There is nothing as stealthy as an object without a wedge. That is natural stealth. Going dark. That fact is responsible for Admiral Courvosier's death.