The Two General's Problem

Wait

A streak drive is simply an inconspicuous Dispatch Boat on steroids. It can use all the WH’s that a GA warship can use in peace time. That means a streak drive can send out a message that the attack has begun beating the GA’s Case Zulu to any system.

If there is a system that the MAN is going to attack where one leg of accessing said system has to be accessed via hyper, then the streak drive has an advantage beating the Case Zulu. Isn't there a bit of travel time from some systems just to get to the nearest junction? What about the Verge? Isn't Henke out in the Verge? If she is and she is attacked, then the Case Zulu will be beaten.

The nick of time is critical in this jungle.

Jonathan_S wrote:As for a tactical use for the Streak drive. I've a hard time thinking of one for combat around a star. Most of that is within the hyper limit where the streak drive (like every hyper generator) doesn't work. And for attempting to hyper around the periphery it also seems no advantage, not unless it has additional undisclosed capabilities.

As far as we know it's only ability is to let a ship into the Iota and Kappa bands, but if you're just trying to get to the far side of a system that's useless -- the transit times even with a conventional hyper drive are so short you'd save effectively no time using the higher bands after you spent the extra time to get into and back out of them.

The one tactical use a Streak drive would have is during hyper-space combat. If you had conventional warships trying to intercept a fast convoy (mil grade propulsion freighters) it'd be nearly impossible since they'd all be able to use the Theta bands, and all have the same top speed (0.6c). But a Streak Drive, by climbing into the Iota or Kappa bands can attempt to overfly the target and drop back into the Theta bands ahead of it. (It's still tricky because of the velocity loss going between bands -- so it'll take a while after getting into the Iota band to work back up to speed and overtake the projected position of your target; and then you'll drop down and have a lower base velocity. So you've got to hope their base velocity is carrying them towards you so the fact that it's higher than yours doesn't help them. (This isn't a sure-fire win for the Streak Drive -- it'll take long enough that the target might change course while you're doing this, so they aren't where you estimated. Or they might drop to a lower band, or out of hyper entirely, to try to hide. So you likely need enough Streak warships to have some remain chasing the target while a few others try to drop across several of it's possible evasion courses. But it is a tactic that no non-Streak warship could attempt.
Of course its for a situation which almost never occurs...

Jonathan_S wrote:It's true that redundant messengers decreases the likelihood of the message going awry.

And even for the MAlign, even if we accept a 0% change of an enemy ship stumbling across the other fleet, there are still situations which might cause them to not be where you expected.

Two possible ones would be:
1) there are more than two "generals" involved and unknown to you someone else already sent that fleet orders which they've left to implement.
2) the "general" in charge of that fleet became aware of an opportunity (enemy vulnerability) that was just too good to pass up and took the fleet off on their own initiative

(In both cases it's possible that a notification is on its way to you; but may not have reached you before you sent out your orders)

penny wrote:I see your point. But wouldn't that essentially make it a Three General's problem?

And that would fall under the “commandeering of forces.“ Even in the RMN I don't think anyone would be allowed to commandeer a force that is particularly slated to be a part of an important two prong attack.

It'd be like Admiral Tsang allowing her fleet to be commandeered when she was tasked to support Admiral Filareta. Or like Tsang running off to chase after other priorities at the moment of truth on her own.

tlb wrote:As for commandeering of forces, that does happen: in The Short Victorious War, the forces at Hancock grabbed some minelayers that were slated to go elsewhere:

Chapter 17 wrote:"It might be a good idea to ask about them, Sir," Honor suggested, and Sarnow nodded in agreement. The minelayers weren't officially assigned to Hancock—they'd simply been passing through on their way to Reevesport when Parks read Admiral Caparelli's dispatch and shortstopped them. It was probably little more than an instinctive reaction, but if he could be convinced to hold them here indefinitely . . .

tlb wrote:I am not sure there is a Three-General Problem, because it is split into a pair of Two-General Problems; the reason is that one of the Generals will have seniority and that lessens the interaction between the two subordinate Generals.

Tlb, I owe you an apology. You have a point about a Three Generals' Problem, because the RMN gives autonomy to its officers in the field. Please accept my apology for being too quick on the draw.

But thinking about your post, if the initial commandeering is happening between the two subordinate Generals some distance away from the General having seniority, then doesn't it come down to the seniority of the two subordinate Generals? If time is of the essence there isn't enough time to dispatch a message asking permission to the General having seniority.

And if the two subordinate Generals form up and attack some other target together and send off a DB asking the senior General for backup, that message might not reach him.

penny wrote:But thinking about your post, if the initial commandeering is happening between the two subordinate Generals some distance away from the General having seniority, then doesn't it come down to the seniority of the two subordinate Generals? If time is of the essence there isn't enough time to dispatch a message asking permission to the General having seniority.

And if the two subordinate Generals form up and attack some other target together and send off a DB asking the senior General for backup, that message might not reach him.

If the senior General is distant and not involved, then it does devolve into a Two General Problem between the subordinates.

penny wrote:Wait

A streak drive is simply an inconspicuous Dispatch Boat on steroids. It can use all the WH’s that a GA warship can use in peace time. That means a streak drive can send out a message that the attack has begun beating the GA’s Case Zulu to any system.

If there is a system that the MAN is going to attack where one leg of accessing said system has to be accessed via hyper, then the streak drive has an advantage beating the Case Zulu. Isn't there a bit of travel time from some systems just to get to the nearest junction? What about the Verge? Isn't Henke out in the Verge? If she is and she is attacked, then the Case Zulu will be beaten.

The nick of time is critical in this jungle.

Jonathan_S wrote:As for a tactical use for the Streak drive. I've a hard time thinking of one for combat around a star. Most of that is within the hyper limit where the streak drive (like every hyper generator) doesn't work. And for attempting to hyper around the periphery it also seems no advantage, not unless it has additional undisclosed capabilities.

As far as we know it's only ability is to let a ship into the Iota and Kappa bands, but if you're just trying to get to the far side of a system that's useless -- the transit times even with a conventional hyper drive are so short you'd save effectively no time using the higher bands after you spent the extra time to get into and back out of them.

The one tactical use a Streak drive would have is during hyper-space combat. If you had conventional warships trying to intercept a fast convoy (mil grade propulsion freighters) it'd be nearly impossible since they'd all be able to use the Theta bands, and all have the same top speed (0.6c). But a Streak Drive, by climbing into the Iota or Kappa bands can attempt to overfly the target and drop back into the Theta bands ahead of it. (It's still tricky because of the velocity loss going between bands -- so it'll take a while after getting into the Iota band to work back up to speed and overtake the projected position of your target; and then you'll drop down and have a lower base velocity. So you've got to hope their base velocity is carrying them towards you so the fact that it's higher than yours doesn't help them. (This isn't a sure-fire win for the Streak Drive -- it'll take long enough that the target might change course while you're doing this, so they aren't where you estimated. Or they might drop to a lower band, or out of hyper entirely, to try to hide. So you likely need enough Streak warships to have some remain chasing the target while a few others try to drop across several of it's possible evasion courses. But it is a tactic that no non-Streak warship could attempt.
Of course its for a situation which almost never occurs...

That's not what I'd consider a tactical use. Tactical is something that has an effect within a single battle.

And even with a streak drive (which can shave about 30% off the transit time between systems) the nearest system is still days away -- any combat will be long over before a message carried through hyper will get to its destination.

Getting your fleet/reinforcements to a system before your enemy can is an operational level action; not a tactical one.

And the streak drive, definitely has operational level advantages -- but once the forces are present within a star system and combat is imminent I don't see any tactical advantages of it over a normal hyper drive -- not based on what we've been told it can do.

---
PS a streak drive isn't an inconspicuous Dispatch Boat; though the MAlign does has some fairly inconspicuous (if a bit oversized) dispatch boats equipped with streak drives.
But the streak drive itself is just a larger, more capable, hyper generator.

We know Detweiler's yacht carries one, IIRC the covert ship Firebrand was assigned had one, and it'd make sense for Ghosts, Sharks, and the eventually forthcoming Lenny Dets to carry them too.

Jonathan_S wrote:As for a tactical use for the Streak drive. I've a hard time thinking of one for combat around a star. Most of that is within the hyper limit where the streak drive (like every hyper generator) doesn't work. And for attempting to hyper around the periphery it also seems no advantage, not unless it has additional undisclosed capabilities.

As far as we know it's only ability is to let a ship into the Iota and Kappa bands, but if you're just trying to get to the far side of a system that's useless -- the transit times even with a conventional hyper drive are so short you'd save effectively no time using the higher bands after you spent the extra time to get into and back out of them.

The one tactical use a Streak drive would have is during hyper-space combat. If you had conventional warships trying to intercept a fast convoy (mil grade propulsion freighters) it'd be nearly impossible since they'd all be able to use the Theta bands, and all have the same top speed (0.6c). But a Streak Drive, by climbing into the Iota or Kappa bands can attempt to overfly the target and drop back into the Theta bands ahead of it. (It's still tricky because of the velocity loss going between bands -- so it'll take a while after getting into the Iota band to work back up to speed and overtake the projected position of your target; and then you'll drop down and have a lower base velocity. So you've got to hope their base velocity is carrying them towards you so the fact that it's higher than yours doesn't help them. (This isn't a sure-fire win for the Streak Drive -- it'll take long enough that the target might change course while you're doing this, so they aren't where you estimated. Or they might drop to a lower band, or out of hyper entirely, to try to hide. So you likely need enough Streak warships to have some remain chasing the target while a few others try to drop across several of it's possible evasion courses. But it is a tactic that no non-Streak warship could attempt.
Of course its for a situation which almost never occurs...

One other issue is that spider ships with streak drives are still somewhat handicapped by their maximum acceleration rate, which is about a quarter of what most Manticoran units can manage.

I'm not going to do the calculations, but this means that over shorter interstellar distances, a streaking spider ship can't beat a non-streaking impeller ship. There's a break-even point somewhere, then the streaker wins races over longer distances.

We've also seen that poor hyperspace conditions force ships to drop into lower bands. High-band hyper generators won't offer any advantages in those circumstances.

munroburton wrote:One other issue is that spider ships with streak drives are still somewhat handicapped by their maximum acceleration rate, which is about a quarter of what most Manticoran units can manage.

I'm not going to do the calculations, but this means that over shorter interstellar distances, a streaking spider ship can't beat a non-streaking impeller ship. There's a break-even point somewhere, then the streaker wins races over longer distances.

We've also seen that poor hyperspace conditions force ships to drop into lower bands. High-band hyper generators won't offer any advantages in those circumstances.

But Penny was not talking about a spider drive ship, when he talked about being in a inconspicuous DB with a streak drive.

A streak drive ship has at least one band that it can drop into, before getting to a band where ordinary ships operate.

tlb wrote:

munroburton wrote:One other issue is that spider ships with streak drives are still somewhat handicapped by their maximum acceleration rate, which is about a quarter of what most Manticoran units can manage.

I'm not going to do the calculations, but this means that over shorter interstellar distances, a streaking spider ship can't beat a non-streaking impeller ship. There's a break-even point somewhere, then the streaker wins races over longer distances.

We've also seen that poor hyperspace conditions force ships to drop into lower bands. High-band hyper generators won't offer any advantages in those circumstances.

But Penny was not talking about a spider drive ship, when he talked about being in a inconspicuous DB with a streak drive.

A streak drive ship has at least one band that it can drop into, before getting to a band where ordinary ships operate.

But the local conditions could preclude using those streak only bands, and limit the streak DB to the same bands as a normal DB. We saw in Talbott space where everything above gamma (?) was blocked due to the local turbulent conditions - this most likely held true for the Streak only bands as well.

So in such conditions, the streak drive would have no advantage (as it has been defined to us so far), but would be able to crank the speed back up on the other side of the turbulence.

munroburton wrote:We've also seen that poor hyperspace conditions force ships to drop into lower bands. High-band hyper generators won't offer any advantages in those circumstances.

tlb wrote:A streak drive ship has at least one band that it can drop into, before getting to a band where ordinary ships operate.

Theemile wrote:But the local conditions could preclude using those streak only bands, and limit the streak DB to the same bands as a normal DB. We saw in Talbott space where everything above gamma (?) was blocked due to the local turbulent conditions - this most likely held true for the Streak only bands as well.

So in such conditions, the streak drive would have no advantage (as it has been defined to us so far), but would be able to crank the speed back up on the other side of the turbulence.

All that is true. It might also be possible to go around trouble and still come out ahead. The streak drive simply has options that a normal hyper-generator lacks, but those options might not always be available.

Theemile wrote:But the local conditions could preclude using those streak only bands, and limit the streak DB to the same bands as a normal DB. We saw in Talbott space where everything above gamma (?) was blocked due to the local turbulent conditions - this most likely held true for the Streak only bands as well.

I definitely agree with your point that you might have conditions such that higher bands aren't usable. But if the situation in Talbott is the one I'm remembering it wasn't quite that situation

Shadow of Saganami wrote:she punched in a search order, directing the computer to overlay her rough course with the strongest h-space gravity waves and to isolate the wave patterns which would carry them towards Spindle. She also remembered to allow for velocity loss on downward hyper translations to follow a given grav wave. She'd forgotten to do that once in an Academy astrogation problem and wound up adding over sixty hours to the total voyage time she was calculating.
She felt a small trickle of satisfaction as she realized the same thing would have happened here, if she'd simply asked the computers to plot a course along the most powerful gravity waves, because one strong section of them never rose above the Gamma bands, which would have required at least three downward translations. That would not only have cost them over sixty percent of their base velocity at each downward translation, but Hexapuma's maximum apparent velocity would have been far lower in the lower bands, as well.

That doesn't say anything about being unable to use the higher bands -- it's just that if you wanted to stick to the grav wave (where it's cheaper and marginally safer) you'd be stuck down in the Gamma bands.

In fact it implied that it would be faster to avoid following that wave and make the "cross country" cut up in the Theta bands.


(Also I'm struck again that this seems a very stupid default search for a nav computer; since if she'd just asked it for the fastest course it never would have recommended going down low and slow)

penny wrote:Wait

A streak drive is simply an inconspicuous Dispatch Boat on steroids. It can use all the WH’s that a GA warship can use in peace time. That means a streak drive can send out a message that the attack has begun beating the GA’s Case Zulu to any system.

If there is a system that the MAN is going to attack where one leg of accessing said system has to be accessed via hyper, then the streak drive has an advantage beating the Case Zulu. Isn't there a bit of travel time from some systems just to get to the nearest junction? What about the Verge? Isn't Henke out in the Verge? If she is and she is attacked, then the Case Zulu will be beaten.

The nick of time is critical in this jungle.

Jonathan_S wrote:As for a tactical use for the Streak drive. I've a hard time thinking of one for combat around a star. Most of that is within the hyper limit where the streak drive (like every hyper generator) doesn't work. And for attempting to hyper around the periphery it also seems no advantage, not unless it has additional undisclosed capabilities.

As far as we know it's only ability is to let a ship into the Iota and Kappa bands, but if you're just trying to get to the far side of a system that's useless -- the transit times even with a conventional hyper drive are so short you'd save effectively no time using the higher bands after you spent the extra time to get into and back out of them.

The one tactical use a Streak drive would have is during hyper-space combat. If you had conventional warships trying to intercept a fast convoy (mil grade propulsion freighters) it'd be nearly impossible since they'd all be able to use the Theta bands, and all have the same top speed (0.6c). But a Streak Drive, by climbing into the Iota or Kappa bands can attempt to overfly the target and drop back into the Theta bands ahead of it. (It's still tricky because of the velocity loss going between bands -- so it'll take a while after getting into the Iota band to work back up to speed and overtake the projected position of your target; and then you'll drop down and have a lower base velocity. So you've got to hope their base velocity is carrying them towards you so the fact that it's higher than yours doesn't help them. (This isn't a sure-fire win for the Streak Drive -- it'll take long enough that the target might change course while you're doing this, so they aren't where you estimated. Or they might drop to a lower band, or out of hyper entirely, to try to hide. So you likely need enough Streak warships to have some remain chasing the target while a few others try to drop across several of it's possible evasion courses. But it is a tactic that no non-Streak warship could attempt.
Of course its for a situation which almost never occurs...

Jonathan_S wrote:That's not what I'd consider a tactical use. Tactical is something that has an effect within a single battle.

And even with a streak drive (which can shave about 30% off the transit time between systems) the nearest system is still days away -- any combat will be long over before a message carried through hyper will get to its destination.

A single battle is what I'm talking about. Let's say it was the MAN that did what Byng did (minus the stupid act, but attacking in the New Tuscany System) or any act that would cause Henke to come running. A streak boat could have beaten the messenger to Henke way ahead of time and arranged for an attack on Henke to begin, busying her so she couldn't respond to any incident in New Tuscany. That would also have given the operation in New Tuscany time to raid data banks, take prisoners and to effect any other time consuming matters. Let's assume New Tuscany has something of value. Even if planetside.

Jonathan_S wrote:Getting your fleet/reinforcements to a system before your enemy can is an operational level action; not a tactical one.

True, but you're thinking is limited to hardware and not information. Beating a messenger to the punch, as in beating a Case Zulu, might be more important than reinforcements if said plan has been devised as such. If a GA warship stumbles across a nest of Spiders (LDs) in the New Tuscany System, beating that messenger to Henke and ordering the force hiding in stealth to attack Henke might pay dividends if the force in New Tuscany needs time to rummage through data, take prisoners, search for survivors, take prizes, etc. Especially if a lengthy operation planetside is needed. Although, that might come closer to a strategic use.

Jonathan_S wrote:And the streak drive, definitely has operational level advantages -- but once the forces are present within a star system and combat is imminent I don't see any tactical advantages of it over a normal hyper drive -- not based on what we've been told it can do.

Agreed. But I think it has strategic and tactical advantages as well, dependent upon the imagination and needs of the "general on the spot."

Jonathan_S wrote:---
P.S. a streak drive isn't an inconspicuous Dispatch Boat; though the MAlign does has some fairly inconspicuous (if a bit oversized) dispatch boats equipped with streak drives.
But the streak drive itself is just a larger, more capable, hyper generator.

We know Detweiler's yacht carries one, IIRC the covert ship Firebrand was assigned had one, and it'd make sense for Ghosts, Sharks, and the eventually forthcoming Lenny Dets to carry them too.

Yes, of course. I keep apologizing for being a bit too familiar with the phrasing. By calling LDs spiders, and by referring to ships and boats equipped with the streak drive as simply streak drives. It isn't likely we'll see a streak drive streaking along in space without some sort of ship.

But I understand the necessity for the correction, for the record. In case I wasn't aware. Plus, I'm lazy, rushed and a bit too familiar. My apology.

At any rate, I hope we are in agreement that it definitely has a strategic use. Beating the messenger to the MBS and other major allied systems ahead of the Case Zulu warning can give the enemy forces who are waiting some critical time to go ahead and begin the attack. Preventing those allied systems from being forewarned and preparing. Shooting Paul Revere or beating him to his stops would have cost a lot of the lives that were saved. And might've cost the victory.

.