?

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:And a warship that can accelerate faster in hyper with even a higher top speed might have a greater tactical advantage of successfully attacking in hyper. Hyper raiders?

Somehow achieving a higher top speed in hyper might be a slight tactical benefit. At least you'd be able to run down ships that had military grade shielding; which you can't now.

But remember that hyper combat is so unlikely, that it is so hard to find enemies there due to the high particle densities restricting sensor range, that no major navy has ever found it worth equipping their ships with a spherical bubble sidewall -- despite it giving them a nearly insurmountable edge in grav-wave combat (and ships spend as much of their time in hyper in grav waves as they can)
A bubble wall basically halves the effective weapons range of their opponents; giving the ship carrying it a massive "immunity zone" where their guns can kill the enemy but the enemy's can't hurt them.


So it seems unlikely that navies are going to spend much effort on something whose main advantage is a small benefit to hyper combat. Not unless it's a nearly free byproduct of some other desired improvement.

Besides, sensors are much myopic in hyper - what is the point of extra tactical speed in Hyper, when you can't see a target to know you can even run it down.

The times we've seen ship to ship interactions of any kind in hyper were the exceptions, not the norm.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But remember that hyper combat is so unlikely, that it is so hard to find enemies there due to the high particle densities restricting sensor range, that no major navy has ever found it worth equipping their ships with a spherical bubble sidewall -- despite it giving them a nearly insurmountable edge in grav-wave combat (and ships spend as much of their time in hyper in grav waves as they can)

Besides, sensors are much myopic in hyper - what is the point of extra tactical speed in Hyper, when you can't see a target to know you can even run it down.

The times we've seen ship to ship interactions of any kind in hyper were the exceptions, not the norm.

Absolutely.

On Basilisk Station wrote:Hyper-space wasn't like normal-space. The laws of relativistic physics applied at any given point in hyper, but as a hypothetical observer looked outward, his instruments showed a rapidly increasing distortion. Maximum observation range was barely twenty light-minutes under ideal conditions; beyond that, the gravity-warped chaos of hyper and its highly charged particles and extreme background radiation made instruments utterly unreliable.

And we know from IEH that radar and passive sensors are far more strongly affected.

Remember when Wanderman pulled off his little trick to get gravitics back up during a combat sim? Without her grav sensors Wayfarer wasn't able to see a (simulated) enemy that was within missile range!!. Radar and EM passives couldn't see a ship a mere "one-point-five million klicks". (5 lightseconds)
So it seems in hyper that grav sensors have something like 240x the range of anything else.


But 20 LM is myopic for intercept purposes. And that's where you'd get the faintest hint of a sensor contact, and only under the most ideal of situations.


But let's say you're a warship (0.6c top speed, 500g accel) that's trying to raid merchants (0.5c top speed), and are lying doggo across a common shipping route.

First, minor variations in hyper logs, or deliberate minor deviations could easily lead ships taking that route to simply never cross your sensor horizon. But let's say you're lucky and you spot a merchant ship that would pass within 10 LM of you.
If you don't move they'll cut a 34.6 LM path through your 40 LM diameter maximum sensor bubble. At 0.5 c they'll have blown through your sensor range in little more than an hour. In that time you'll have been able to move a maximum of 2.4 LM (and be up to almost 0.07c) That's not enough to intercept them, and it's not even enough to keep them in your sensor range. It'll take this warship over 8 hours to simply match the target's speed, much less overtake them.

By that point they're several light-hours downrange and odds are you'll never get back into sensor range. They'd need to make only the most minor of random changes to their vector and you'll never find them.


To successfully pull off an intercept you already have to be traveling along at pretty close to your target's cruising (normally top) speed. But that means you need excellent intelligence (if it's a tightly scheduled shipment/convoy) or insane luck because now you not only need to know their likely route to within miniscule fractions of a % deviation but also near perfectly match their timing -- else you'll just end up flying ahead or behind them for the entire trip without ever entering each other's sensor ranges.



The Selker Rift is obviously an exception because ships travel so much slower there that overtake is possible -- and the RMN convoy that got hit pre-war was a case of near perfect intel thanks to pre-war infiltration from Peep agents. Pirates don't have the ability to get that kind of intel, so the RMN, for all it's experience in convoy protection, wouldn't have yet been painfully taught the benefit of the convoy commander ordering minor variations in course, speed, or timing to make sure that the one place they weren't was exactly when and where the convoy routing orders said they would be. But I bet after that convoy got hit that kind of evasive routing became SOP.

Jonathan_S wrote:How important is top speed to an Honorverse ship?
[cut]
Wolfhound-class max normal accel is 706.2g (90% of her zero safety margin accel of 784.7g), on that 7 LH run her velocity would peak at 0.76c, just over 9 hours into the run, as she made turnover. And given that most combat happens within a hyper limit (which is less than 1 LH in diameter) and ships can carry negligible velocity in from hyper, and outside of very, very, unusual circumstances top speed is just never an issue for regular ships.

And no one fights outside the hyperlimit because it's very easy to simply avoid contact by translating up to Alpha, like Honor did when the Ganymede Station fired at her fleet in UH, or like we saw more recently in Toll of Honor with Sixth Fleet. So out-of-hyperlimit battles are near non-existent.

And all that relies on the fleets still being at under 0.3c because you can't translate up above that (and survive). So the top speed is irrelevant for fleets outside of the hyperlimit because you don't want to be above 0.3c, as that limits your tactical options. A fleet barrelling down a course at 0.5c has a predictable vector and can't translate up for some time until they shed 40% of their velocity.

As for whether a high-speed pass is useful depends on whether stealth is required. We know the effect of bow shocks, seen in the Hasta III in Galton.

Well… just to remain true to mineself, a penny's worth of my thoughts.

The MA is not a traditional navy, but y’all keep insisting on judging what they may or may not do upon that flawed assumption that they are a traditional navy, or that they think like a traditional navy even though they have proved from the onset that the traditional ways of thinking, the strategy and even the tactics, must be thrown in the garbage.

Heck, at one point quite some time ago I argued vehemently with a poster who insisted that I was crazy for even considering that the Mesan Alignment were, or even has, a navy.

Their entire technology for the most part is a complete and utter departure from traditional tactics and strategy. Thus, that difference in technology across the board enables the MA to approach traditional strategy and tactics differently.

I know, I sound like a broken record to me too.

The MA cannot afford to meet even a single member of the GA on the GA's terms, much less the entire GA. Even though I have insisted that the RFN will attack alongside the MAN when the shit hits the fan — and that the RFN will not be the paper tiger the SLN turned out to be — does not mean the MAN will wage a traditional war. The MAN needs every advantage they can get.

Sure, no traditional navy saw any need or benefit to approach hyper warfare as a norm or saw that it was worthwhile. But the MA is no traditional navy whose technology is nowhere near traditional. As a matter of fact, the very fact that no other navy would expect an enemy to go all in on an unorthodox state sponsored strategy of commerce raiding in hyper is the very reason it could work. It could completely throw the GA off balance if they began losing ships and commerce and valuable officers in hyper.

And if the MA successfully attacks freighters in hyper delivering crucial materials for the war effort, the GA could become seriously hamstrung.

Consider the following thought posed by Jonathan_S.

So it seems unlikely that navies are going to spend much effort on something whose main advantage is a small benefit to hyper combat. Not unless it's a free byproduct of some other desired improvement.

Or, if it is a byproduct of the capabilities of their technology, period. For instance, y’all are considering commerce raiding in hyper executed in the traditional way. Counting on potluck. But. The MA enjoys unprecedented stealth. Their strategy can send ‘hyper raiders’ directly into the enemy’s system and follow their targets into hyper.

And if the MA has improved their sensor technology in hyper giving them an edge on GA sensors, then Bob's still ur Uncle. And do remember, I have always suggested that the MA’s sensors could turn out to be better than the GA’s at the end of the day, just in time for the opening phases of war. Since the MAN's stealth is better, then their sensor development might have benefitted. And since the MA is traveling in higher hyper bands where particle density is even higher, then their sensor suites could be marginally better, in hyper.

Necessity is the mother of invention.


Higher acceleration and higher top speed in hyper along with marginally better sensors with the ability to follow targets into hyper ‘translates’ into a possible commerce raiding strategy available to the enemy.

Theemile:
Besides, sensors are much myopic in hyper - what is the point of extra tactical speed in Hyper, when you can't see a target to know you can even run it down.

The times we've seen ship to ship interactions of any kind in hyper were the exceptions, not the norm.

You only need your sensors to be less myopic than the enemy’s. If you can follow said enemy into hyper unbeknownst to said enemy.

The MA has changed a lot of norms already.

penny wrote:
Or, if it is a byproduct of the capabilities of their technology, period. For instance, y’all are considering commerce raiding in hyper executed in the traditional way. Counting on potluck. But. The MA enjoys unprecedented stealth. Their strategy can send ‘hyper raiders’ directly into the enemy’s system and follow their targets into hyper.

Why bother? If it's a major system they had to spend months sneaking in, so why hyper out to (maybe) kill an outbound freighter and then have to spend months again sneaking in? Once you've snuck in you'd want more return for the time expended.

And if it's not a major system then, sure they can get in fairly quickly as it won't have the massive long range deep space sensor arrays that can detect arrivals up to lightmonths away. But if it's not a major system there shouldn't be enough defenses to bother them and so they can kill the freighter, and the system defenses, and all its infrastructure -- without ever having to chase anybody.

Also, as a practical matter, it's a bit tricky chasing merchants into hyper to kill them their when most merchant ships can out accelerate the MAlign's spider warships; with most having at least a 25g advantage. Even if the MAlign figures out how to exceed 0.6c (giving them more than a 0.1c overtake on merchants) it'll take them so long to work up to it they'll never find the freighter.

A freighter with a 25g advantage over the spider ship, and that'd still be a fairly pokey freighter, will have added an light hour to lead by the time the spider ship finally reaches 0.5c (4 hours after the merchant did) -- and only after that point can the spider ship start catching up. Good luck, it's going to need it -- no mater how high its eventual top speed might be.

(Though this is all assuming this happens in a rift. We just don't know enough about how spiders work in a grav wave to know if it would help or hurt their intercept chances -- depends on whether or not they get the same nearly 10x accel advantage a ship with sails and a compensator does when accelerating in a grav wave. If they do then it's easier to run down a merchant in a wave; they match velocities after just 26 mintues; and only lost 6.5 light minutes of ground. If they don't... well their intercept chances went from near-zero to even nearer-zero )

penny wrote:
And if the MA has improved their sensor technology in hyper giving them an edge on GA sensors, then Bob's still ur Uncle. And do remember, I have always suggested that the MA’s sensors could turn out to be better than the GA’s at the end of the day, just in time for the opening phases of war. Since the MAN's stealth is better, then their sensor development might have benefitted. And since the MA is traveling in higher hyper bands where particle density is even higher, then their sensor suites could be marginally better, in hyper. Necessity is the mother of invention.


Higher acceleration and higher top speed in hyper along with marginally better sensors with the ability to follow targets into hyper ‘translates’ into a possible commerce raiding strategy available to the enemy.

Unless the MAlign is going to abandon spider ships for this (in which case how are the going to sneak into system to trail the freighters into hyper?) an acceleration advantage is almost less plausible as a tech breakthrough than a top speed advantage.

Better sensors are the most plausible of your suggestions. But I think you'd need far, far, far, more than just "marginally better sensors" to make hyperspace interceptions, or stern chases, likely to succeed.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:
Or, if it is a byproduct of the capabilities of their technology, period. For instance, y’all are considering commerce raiding in hyper executed in the traditional way. Counting on potluck. But. The MA enjoys unprecedented stealth. Their strategy can send ‘hyper raiders’ directly into the enemy’s system and follow their targets into hyper.

Why bother? If it's a major system they had to spend months sneaking in, so why hyper out to (maybe) kill an outbound freighter and then have to spend months again sneaking in? Once you've snuck in you'd want more return for the time expended.

And if it's not a major system then, sure they can get in fairly quickly as it won't have the massive long range deep space sensor arrays that can detect arrivals up to lightmonths away. But if it's not a major system there shouldn't be enough defenses to bother them and so they can kill the freighter, and the system defenses, and all its infrastructure -- without ever having to chase anybody.

Also, as a practical matter, it's a bit tricky chasing merchants into hyper to kill them their when most merchant ships can out accelerate the MAlign's spider warships; with most having at least a 25g advantage. Even if the MAlign figures out how to exceed 0.6c (giving them more than a 0.1c overtake on merchants) it'll take them so long to work up to it they'll never find the freighter.

A freighter with a 25g advantage over the spider ship, and that'd still be a fairly pokey freighter, will have added an light hour to lead by the time the spider ship finally reaches 0.5c (4 hours after the merchant did) -- and only after that point can the spider ship start catching up. Good luck, it's going to need it -- no mater how high its eventual top speed might be.

(Though this is all assuming this happens in a rift. We just don't know enough about how spiders work in a grav wave to know if it would help or hurt their intercept chances -- depends on whether or not they get the same nearly 10x accel advantage a ship with sails and a compensator does when accelerating in a grav wave. If they do then it's easier to run down a merchant in a wave; they match velocities after just 26 mintues; and only lost 6.5 light minutes of ground. If they don't... well their intercept chances went from near-zero to even nearer-zero )

penny wrote:
And if the MA has improved their sensor technology in hyper giving them an edge on GA sensors, then Bob's still ur Uncle. And do remember, I have always suggested that the MA’s sensors could turn out to be better than the GA’s at the end of the day, just in time for the opening phases of war. Since the MAN's stealth is better, then their sensor development might have benefitted. And since the MA is traveling in higher hyper bands where particle density is even higher, then their sensor suites could be marginally better, in hyper. Necessity is the mother of invention.


Higher acceleration and higher top speed in hyper along with marginally better sensors with the ability to follow targets into hyper ‘translates’ into a possible commerce raiding strategy available to the enemy.

Unless the MAlign is going to abandon spider ships for this (in which case how are the going to sneak into system to trail the freighters into hyper?) an acceleration advantage is almost less plausible as a tech breakthrough than a top speed advantage.

Better sensors are the most plausible of your suggestions. But I think you'd need far, far, far, more than just "marginally better sensors" to make hyperspace interceptions, or stern chases, likely to succeed.

Sorry, I failed to mention that all of my suggestions are built on the backs of great thinkers who came before me. Like science.

Remontoire suggested a possible impeller-spider hybrid on the very first page of this thread. So much about the LDs still remain classified. Some possible breakthroughs I leave room for incorporation. We had a thread on possible other ships. These could be purpose built 'hyper raiders' employing the impeller-spider hybrid. The MA will certainly introduce new wrinkles, as they did with their first version of FTL technology. They have implied they are on the verge of solving the mystery of the Manty powerplant? Look what they came up with in the area of counter missiles. These are not SL thinkers. These are Alphas.

At any rate, a successful commerce AND warship raiding strategy will cause the GA to redeploy and spread out their forces. The MA should apply this strategy by attacking the commerce and escorts arriving and departing in less defended systems. Where there will be inferior sensors and much less traffic. That also fits the tactic of defeat in detail. Also, targets of opportunity in major systems are not out of the question.

My job is to only follow suit in this thread and caution the fleet as to what could happen.


P.S. As to why bother? Attacking in hyper instead of in-system enjoys plausible deniability. If the MA can whittle the herd in hyper for awhile, the GA won't even suspect what is happening. The GA will remain ignorant that the war has even begun.

And if this type of warfare and its execution is successful, the GA might also remain ignorant that they are being followed into hyper, so they might also remain ignorant of what measures should be or could be taken to counter it. A continued loss of ships and freighters may cause entities to leave the alliance in droves and be picked up by the RFN.

P.P.S. This kind of covert commerce raiding strategy might even allow the MA to take a page out of their own book and instead of framing the RMN in the eyes of the SLN, they might be able to frame the SLN in the eyes of the GA. It might be possible to make it appear as if the SL is retaliating. LoL

penny wrote:Remontoire suggested a possible impeller-spider hybrid on the very first page of this thread. So much about the LDs still remain classified. Some possible breakthroughs I leave room for incorporation. We had a thread on possible other ships. These could be purpose built 'hyper raiders' employing the impeller-spider hybrid.

I have also mentioned a wedge - spider hybrid, but it would have to be purpose built; an LD is too massive to use a compensator, so it gets no advantage by having a wedge (and the disadvantage of being more visible). The reason I thought such a hybrid might be built was to get the ship in place to attack in spider mode quickly.

The main question about any "hyper raider": is why would it have a spider drive, if the intent is to attack within a gravity wave? The spider could be useful in a rift, but would be laughably slow in a wave.

penny wrote:Sorry, I failed to mention that all of my suggestions are built on the backs of great thinkers who came before me. Like science.

Remontoire suggested a possible impeller-spider hybrid on the very first page of this thread. So much about the LDs still remain classified. Some possible breakthroughs I leave room for incorporation. We had a thread on possible other ships. These could be purpose built 'hyper raiders' employing the impeller-spider hybrid. The MA will certainly introduce new wrinkles, as they did with their first version of FTL technology. They have implied they are on the verge of solving the mystery of the Manty powerplant? Look what they came up with in the area of counter missiles. These are not SL thinkers. These are Alphas.

Thought one thing that we do know about the LDs is their vast size -- hardly an asset for commerce raiding.

If you want to raid commerce you build smaller, cheaper, more numerous destroyers or light cruisers. So you can swarm the area and increase your chances of finding targets. If you want to raid convoys you build battlecruisers -- still affordable in somewhat reasonable numbers and powerful enough to fight their way through most convoy escorts.
But you don't build superdreadnoughts (or even larger LDs) for the purpose of hunting even convoys -- you can't build enough of them and there are more important missions which only ships that powerful can do. So, it's a waste of resources to instead divert them to hunting merchants. So you don't do that, not unless you're desperate or unable to use them more effectively (*cough* Germany WWII, Operation Berlin *cough*)

The LDs seem like their major strategic assets. The thing they seem to be built for, and that the MAlign laments they weren't ready for in time, is attacks like Oyster Bay. Sneak into a system and wipe out its infrastructure -- regardless of its defenses. Far more devastating than hunting lone merchantmen - and a mission worthy of the investment in something are large and powerful as an LD.


Now it's certainly possible that the MAlign are also building smaller ships better suited to commerce raiding. But we've seen no indication of that. And with their stealth they'd probably still be better off using that to better execute classic pirate tactics (lurking near the hyper limit of systems the merchants will be traveling to). Against most systems even small spider ships could play hide-and-seek with the defenders for a long time while being a major threat to shipping. And, unlike the depths of hyperspace, they know ships have to cross the hyper limit to trade there.

penny wrote:P.S. As to why bother? Attacking in hyper instead of in-system enjoys plausible deniability. If the MA can whittle the herd in hyper for awhile, the GA won't even suspect what is happening. The GA will remain ignorant that the war has even begun.

That's a reasonable point. Though again, LDs seem like very much the wrong platform for this, and if the MAlign is interested in a covert commerce raiding strategy that should be reflected in their shipbuilding priorities -- building units best suited to such a mission.

Though to slightly counter my previous post -- people have been known to end up with the wrong navy for the war they had to fight, and that can lead to being forced to (mis)use your major strategic assets on commerce raiding. Like, again, Germany in WWII where they'd been building towards a navy able to stand up to the French Marine National in a conventional fight in the late 40s and then got into a war with the UK in 39. Their destroyers and cruisers weren't suitable for commerce raiding (too short ranged and not seaworthy enough to get out into the Atlantic to prey on shipping approaching the UK), though early on they had some luck with their Panzerschiffe (armored ships), basically very heavy cruiser (hardly the "pocket battleship" the press dubbed them), and far better from their armed merchant cruisers and submarines.

But, whether it was Germany feeling desperation, or the Navy trying to keep Hitler from basically disbanding their surface forces and throwing all those sailors into the army (which is another kind of desperation), they started trying to use their battleships for commerce raiding too.

It didn't go well. Their armed merchant cruisers were far more effective, and their subs even more effective than that. (Though eventually being on the wrong side of a massive manpower, industrial, and research imbalance decisively turned the tide even against those more effective raiders)

But even if the battleship raiding had been less ineffective they'd never have enough of such expensive units to really cripple an their enemy. They were the wrong kind of ship for that kind of mission -- and Germany didn't have enough of them (and couldn't have build and manned enough of them) for the kind of missions they are intended for. Not against the UK, or the US, much less both combined.

The MAlign might end up resorting to using LDs for commerce raiding. But I don't think I can be convinced that that's an effective, or proper, use of resources.

penny wrote:Well… just to remain true to mineself, a penny's worth of my thoughts.

Why do we get only half the usual rate?

The MA is not a traditional navy, but y’all keep insisting on judging what they may or may not do upon that flawed assumption that they are a traditional navy, or that they think like a traditional navy even though they have proved from the onset that the traditional ways of thinking, the strategy and even the tactics, must be thrown in the garbage.

The MA cannot afford to meet even a single member of the GA on the GA's terms, much less the entire GA. Even though I have insisted that the RFN will attack alongside the MAN when the shit hits the fan — and that the RFN will not be the paper tiger the SLN turned out to be — does not mean the MAN will wage a traditional war. The MAN needs every advantage they can get.

Agreed.

But just a note that unless the RFN is getting armed from a hidden location, the GA will have good intel on the RFN's capabilities. So not a paper tiger, but also not an unknown tiger.

If the RFN is getting armed from elsewhere, then that removes the distinction between the RFN and the MAN. At that point, we should simply argue that the MAN has a conventional, impeller component to their order of battle.

Sure, no traditional navy saw any need or benefit to approach hyper warfare as a norm or saw that it was worthwhile. But the MA is no traditional navy whose technology is nowhere near traditional. As a matter of fact, the very fact that no other navy would expect an enemy to go all in on an unorthodox state sponsored strategy of commerce raiding in hyper is the very reason it could work. It could completely throw the GA off balance if they began losing ships and commerce and valuable officers in hyper.

And if the MA successfully attacks freighters in hyper delivering crucial materials for the war effort, the GA could become seriously hamstrung.

I don't think the MAN cannot attack enough freighters serving the GA's military requirements to significantly disrupt the production pipeline. At any point in time, the majority of the matériel is not in shipping between the production systems. And even of what is in transit, a measurable loss would be noticed and cause a shift in patterns, bigger escorts, etc.

Moreover, the biggest nexus of production is the Manticore Binary System, Trevor's Star, and Beowulf. There's usually no hyperspace travel between any of those components. Therefore, a hyperspace attack tactic would not affect any of this at all.

Now, if you couple a sudden attack on freighters with an attack on stored supplies in the systems as well as the production lines (à la Oyster Bay), that changes things.

And yet, I don't think we'll see a massive hyperspace interception at all. First, Physics: in-universe, it's highly unlikely to generate an interception outside of very few stable points where ships must pass through. Second, the author's bias for the HV: it doesn't look like it's where he wants to take the writing.

Or, if it is a byproduct of the capabilities of their technology, period. For instance, y’all are considering commerce raiding in hyper executed in the traditional way. Counting on potluck. But. The MA enjoys unprecedented stealth. Their strategy can send ‘hyper raiders’ directly into the enemy’s system and follow their targets into hyper.

For some reason, it appears that one can't follow ships into hyper. RFC hasn't explained why (there may be some hints in the Long Manoeuvre), but every time a ship translates up, it effectively evades action and can't be re-acquired.

Of course, he's free to change that and allow MAN ships to do so. But why would they? Why not stay in-system, even after a flaming datum has showed up in the sensors of the defenders?

The problem of leaving is that it takes weeks at a minimum to re-insert to repeat the operation. Taking one freighter every two months, however valuable, seems like a waste of warship. Maybe if it could do that to a convoy, so that it could take out half a dozen ships in one go.

But here's a better tactic that they could use with their stealth: attach a bomb to the freighter(s). They can get close enough that launching a drone with the bomb should be doable. The drone doesn't need endurance nor does it need the spider drive: a simple, very low power wedge would suffice to catch up with a freighter that is decelerating anyway to make transition. Attach a dozen bombs to the hull of the freighter, set them on a timer, then rinse and repeat.

And if the MA has improved their sensor technology in hyper giving them an edge on GA sensors, then Bob's still ur Uncle. And do remember, I have always suggested that the MA’s sensors could turn out to be better than the GA’s at the end of the day, just in time for the opening phases of war. Since the MAN's stealth is better, then their sensor development might have benefitted. And since the MA is traveling in higher hyper bands where particle density is even higher, then their sensor suites could be marginally better, in hyper.

See Jonathan's reply why "marginally better" is not enough. "Significantly better" would not be enough either. They'd need a revolutionary improvement in hyperspace sensors.

And even if it has happened, they need to generate an intercept on ships that are likely travelling at 0.5c.

Higher acceleration and higher top speed in hyper along with marginally better sensors with the ability to follow targets into hyper ‘translates’ into a possible commerce raiding strategy available to the enemy.

Where did you find higher acceleration? Right now, the best acceleration is in the hands of the GA, with their improved nodes and compensators.

Higher top speed could help. But we'd be talking about a days-long stern chase. Is that a good use of resources?