Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

Theemile wrote:This would work as long as you have FTL firecontrol and can pass it off to another controller after launch. If you don't have FTL, firecontrol's light speed limit makes it worthless after 10 million km or so.

kzt wrote:It also only works once. Then they go to a different fire distribution plan.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Handing off fire control is certainly possible, we see ships controlling missiles that came from other sources so there must be some handoff protocol.

And what fire distribution can they do that will catch the controllers lying doggo far from the main fleet? Especially if the controllers are some specialized ships built only for the purpose--little offensive capability but a lot of control capability and a lot of stealth. As small a hull as possible to minimize the jump time.

Who would build such a ship? Certainly not the RMN given how RFC has expressed their displeasure with special purpose built ships. You are suggesting a hyperspace capable version of Mycroft.

I realize that I have advocated a ship class that would be an extension of Wayfarer, which would be a combination LAC tender/base and pod controller for defense of small star systems; but that was more of an intellectual exercise, not expecting RFC to accept it.

tlb wrote:

Theemile wrote:This would work as long as you have FTL firecontrol and can pass it off to another controller after launch. If you don't have FTL, firecontrol's light speed limit makes it worthless after 10 million km or so.

kzt wrote:It also only works once. Then they go to a different fire distribution plan.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Handing off fire control is certainly possible, we see ships controlling missiles that came from other sources so there must be some handoff protocol.

And what fire distribution can they do that will catch the controllers lying doggo far from the main fleet? Especially if the controllers are some specialized ships built only for the purpose--little offensive capability but a lot of control capability and a lot of stealth. As small a hull as possible to minimize the jump time.

Who would build such a ship? Certainly not the RMN given how RFC has expressed their displeasure with special purpose built ships. You are suggesting a hyperspace capable version of Mycroft.

I realize that I have advocated a ship class that would be an extension of Wayfarer, which would be a combination LAC tender/base and pod controller for defense of small star systems; but that was more of an intellectual exercise, not expecting RFC to accept it.

If someone absolutely had to do something like this, it would probably be a sacrificial jettisoning of Keyhole platforms. The fleet hypers out, leaving behind a few Keyholes which have the bandwidth to control the missiles and enough power to do so up until they get obliterated by the incoming return fire.

No doubt that would be expensive enough to make routine use of the tactic impractical, but in a pinch it's better to lose a few Keyholes than ships.

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Yeah, this the only way to hide a shipyard in the long term--build the whole thing mobile and cruising around in interstellar space. Obviously the acceleration will be quite low but that's enough to make it awfully hard to drop out of hyper on it.

Sure. You could just move the star too.

When you have a steady supply of ships hauling raw materials its not that hard to find one heading out and follow it. Or just jump it and pull the navigational data.

You don't really need that many ships. Groups from home fleet periodically conduct exercises out in interstellar space--and sometimes meet the shipyard.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
Handing off fire control is certainly possible, we see ships controlling missiles that came from other sources so there must be some handoff protocol.

And what fire distribution can they do that will catch the controllers lying doggo far from the main fleet? Especially if the controllers are some specialized ships built only for the purpose--little offensive capability but a lot of control capability and a lot of stealth. As small a hull as possible to minimize the jump time.

Its impossible to hide a transition from alpha to real space. You can detect it at seveeal light months. As soon as you cross the wall somone is sending out probes, some accelrating at 600 kms/sec, so you are under observation within minutes. And they will keep you under observation. Hence there is a very small volume of space you can be inside.

Using a continious stream missile attackmeans that there are always missiles that can be redirected towards any of that piece of space. If you do the math there really isn’t any advantage to sending large pulsese vs continpus streams. The defense still saturates, it just takes longer, bit it takes place during the time you’d be not yet firing. And then you’ll get a shower of missiles that continues after the target is dealt with, which is typically what happens with the next 6 hige slavos over the next 10minutes.

Loren Pechtel wrote:You don't really need that many ships. Groups from home fleet periodically conduct exercises out in interstellar space--and sometimes meet the shipyard.

You have 120 eight million ton ships being built over 18 months. Assume 50% loss due to processing, how many millions of ton of raw material do you need per day?

And your construction crews turn over every 14 days, jist like normal workers in dangerous hardship posts. How many passenger liners do you need flying back and forth to move your entire construction force?

tlb wrote:Who would build such a ship? Certainly not the RMN given how RFC has expressed their displeasure with special purpose built ships. You are suggesting a hyperspace capable version of Mycroft.

I realize that I have advocated a ship class that would be an extension of Wayfarer, which would be a combination LAC tender/base and pod controller for defense of small star systems; but that was more of an intellectual exercise, not expecting RFC to accept it.

Yeah, it basically is Mycroft mounted in a ship.

kzt wrote:Its impossible to hide a transition from alpha to real space. You can detect it at seveeal light months. As soon as you cross the wall somone is sending out probes, some accelrating at 600 kms/sec, so you are under observation within minutes. And they will keep you under observation. Hence there is a very small volume of space you can be inside.

Using a continious stream missile attackmeans that there are always missiles that can be redirected towards any of that piece of space. If you do the math there really isn’t any advantage to sending large pulsese vs continpus streams. The defense still saturates, it just takes longer, bit it takes place during the time you’d be not yet firing. And then you’ll get a shower of missiles that continues after the target is dealt with, which is typically what happens with the next 6 hige slavos over the next 10minutes.

Depends on how far out you drop into real space. Typically you drop in just outside the hyper limit, if you do that you're right. However, if you drop out say a light-week out the defenders are going to have a very hard time finding the doggo ships as the searchers are within weapons range of your fleet.

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:You don't really need that many ships. Groups from home fleet periodically conduct exercises out in interstellar space--and sometimes meet the shipyard.

You have 120 eight million ton ships being built over 18 months. Assume 50% loss due to processing, how many millions of ton of raw material do you need per day?

And your construction crews turn over every 14 days, jist like normal workers in dangerous hardship posts. How many passenger liners do you need flying back and forth to move your entire construction force?

Basic refining isn't done at a shipyard so your loss ratio isn't nearly that. Even with your 50%, though, that's something like 160 freighters of material per year. 14 per month. One fleet visit/month should do it.

Crew turnover is a bigger problem, but this is a large enough base you probably don't need to swap that often.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

kzt wrote:You have 120 eight million ton ships being built over 18 months. Assume 50% loss due to processing, how many millions of ton of raw material do you need per day?

And your construction crews turn over every 14 days, jist like normal workers in dangerous hardship posts. How many passenger liners do you need flying back and forth to move your entire construction force?

Basic refining isn't done at a shipyard so your loss ratio isn't nearly that. Even with your 50%, though, that's something like 160 freighters of material per year. 14 per month. One fleet visit/month should do it.

Crew turnover is a bigger problem, but this is a large enough base you probably don't need to swap that often.

I can follow a fleet a lot easier than a single freighter. Particularly on a regular cycle. And the best thing about that kind of site is its purely military. You can just deliver a few hundred thousand missiles by freighter and send them off to kill something on a given vector at about x range. Every thing you might hit is a valid target.

kzt wrote:And the best thing about that kind of site is its purely military. You can just deliver a few hundred thousand missiles by freighter and send them off to kill something on a given vector at about x range. Every thing you might hit is a valid target.

You want the missiles to be similar to Mistletoe or Silver Bullets, so they have endurance and enter under stealth and have some discrimination to recognize higher value targets. But that type of attack could also be used against the orbitals in the home system; that is what the attacks on Mycroft at Beowulf and Oyster Bay were after all.

No, you try that at manticore you’ll scrub the planet clean. And lots of people will be very unhappy.