Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

I always thought Darius would turn out to be in a very inhospitable unforgiving and uninhabitable system where nobody would even care or dare to search, since the Alignment prides themselves on genetic enhancements that would allow them to do so.

But that thinking came before we found out that Darius is a beautiful world. If it is a beautiful world then having very dense dust clouds all around it should prevent it from being such a beautiful world wouldn't it?

Anyway, why rely on telescopes at the level of technology rampant in the HV. We currently use very unsophisticated by comparison probes like Voyager 1. And our telemetry capability isn't anything remotely (no pun intended) FTL. At any rate, send out lots of probes to do the leg work. Especially at the maximum speed HV probes are capable of. A massed effort by all of the superpowers in the HV can split the cost and a slice of the Hitchhiker 's galaxy.

penny wrote:
I asked awhile ago how long it takes for the MAN to bring up its Spider drive? … Then go to emergency acceleration and evasive maneuvers?

If the MAN does a mass transit with impeller-driven warships, say, insignificant stolen or acquired SLN warships leading the formation, will any trailing MAN ships have enough time to “cloak” then evade?

Question. We all know that ships can be towed through hyper. Can a ship be towed through a WH? Also, I assume ships are normally towed, trailing behind the towing ship. Can a ship be “towed ahead.” Wait… what? Can powerful enough presser beams press smaller ships into a WH ahead of itself?

Question 2. The author said no unmanned warships. But what is the size of the smallest skeleton crew? A skeleton crew of sacrificial lambs.

a)The length of the emergence lane is different on each wormhole, but the Manticore junction was ~8 minutes long. Also important to note - as mentioned above, Shrikes at Ah Jay Prime were one shotting BCs within seconds of arrival through the wormhole.

b) Mass formations shut down the wormhole for a length of time. So either you are part of the mass transit, or waiting hours to the the next in line with no cover. Even if you could engineer to be at the "back" of the mass transit, you would still be exposed to fire (from the rear, as well as the sides) for however long it takes to leave the emergence lane.

Q1) Towing a ship through wormhole has never been shown or mentioned to the best of my knowledge. Since it uses gravitational tractors to pull a ship without a hyperenerator or sails, my assumption would be no.

Q2) Depends on the ship, depends on the length of travel, depends on what you are trying to do. A short range (<24 hours travel) skeleton crew on a freighter is probably less than a dozen. A Warship is deliberately designed to require a larger crew for damage redundancy, and that redundancy means the captain is not also sitting in a control capsule where he/she can do the jobs usually done by 5 individuals were he to wish. And if you want firecontrol, intel, or to fire weapons, (or sleep, or eat anything but canned rations), that's probably a no go outside of automated defensive systems (which should require a babysitter so they don't make a serious mistake.

And if a ship has maintenance issues, what constitutes as a skeleton crew is probably larger.

Such a crew on a DD might be 25-30. On an SD, it's probably closer to 100 or more, even with some sub systems (like entire reactors) shut down.

penny wrote:I asked awhile ago how long it takes for the MAN to bring up its Spider drive? … Then go to emergency acceleration and evasive maneuvers?

If the MAN does a mass transit with impeller-driven warships, say, insignificant stolen or acquired SLN warships leading the formation, will any trailing MAN ships have enough time to “cloak” then evade?

Question. We all know that ships can be towed through hyper. Can a ship be towed through a WH? Also, I assume ships are normally towed, trailing behind the towing ship. Can a ship be “towed ahead.” Wait… what? Can powerful enough presser beams press smaller ships into a WH ahead of itself?

But we also know from the convoy engagement in SVW that a ship can only be towed through a grav wave if it still has one sail operable -- otherwise the grav shear destroys it.
So it seems rather irrelevant whether something could be towed through a wormhole since it seems to survive in the transit lane it'd still need one giant highly visible sail.


However, in fairness, RFC hasn't told us how spider ships manage grav waves or wormholes; he only implied that they could. So by the power of plot they might have some non-sail way of doing so -- of which we know none of the benefits or downsides. Though AFAWK they would still need some way of protecting themselves from the grav shear -- so I think that still rules out towing a ship with its drive down.



As for hiding MAN ships in a sacrificial transit of low value ships, that's back to we don't know how spider drive ships manage wormholes. But I'd tend to think the plan wouldn't work just because of the low numbers you can manage with a mass transit. Even the MWJ can only manage about 22 ships in a mass transit (and if you're trying to hide an LD in that mass transit it probably takes up the tonnage of 2 ships) -- that's just not a huge number of hide in.

(Again, in fairness, that's the number of SDs that can fit in the tonnage cap. You could potentially fit a lot more small ships; but I have to assume there's some [as yet unstated] limit on the volume you can pack ships into to mass transit. And, thanks to their sails, a destroyer wouldn't actually take up much less room than an SD for transit. It's 1/60th the tonnage but probably, at a swag, takes up 50-80% the space. So even smaller ships seem unlikely to allow a numerous enough swarm to hide another ship in)

Relax wrote:As for Cosmic Dust: I was under the impression from an amateur astronomer I talk to fairly regularly and have gone star gazing occasionally with that anything within ~1000 LY is not a problem due to dust. So definiton of "not a problem" is ...well shall we say clouded in opaque dust cloud.

Is your friend saying that there are no major dust clouds within 1000 LY of Earth or is he saying that there are major dust clouds within this region, but we can still see though them?

Relax wrote:If NOTHING else, this would eliminate vast swathes of space you do not have to scout for potential hidden bases. Small bases you don't care about. Its those monster 100km ++++ shipyards glowing into space with giant fusion reactor signatures glowing in the asteroid belts and refineries closer in that no one can hide. Not the minor Hole in the Wall's leading to Galton.

Good joke about the way Galton was found, but Galton DID have shipyards and factories. However Galton was not found by observation, instead by triangulation based on weapon deliveries.

Jonathan_S wrote:But we also know from the convoy engagement in SVW that a ship can only be towed through a grav wave if it still has one sail operable -- otherwise the grav shear destroys it.

So it seems rather irrelevant whether something could be towed through a wormhole since it seems to survive in the transit lane it'd still need one giant highly visible sail.

Noted. But I am operating on the assumption that larger ships (like pickup trucks ) have a greater towing capacity than smaller ships. Let me explain. For instance, let's consider towed pods. If towed inside the wedge then pods need no sails. Hold that thought for below.

Jonathan_S wrote:However, in fairness, RFC hasn't told us how spider ships manage grav waves or wormholes; he only implied that they could. So by the power of plot they might have some non-sail way of doing so -- of which we know none of the benefits or downsides. Though AFAWK they would still need some way of protecting themselves from the grav shear -- so I think that still rules out towing a ship with its drive down.

As for hiding MAN ships in a sacrificial transit of low value ships, that's back to we don't know how spider drive ships manage wormholes. But I'd tend to think the plan wouldn't work just because of the low numbers you can manage with a mass transit. Even the MWJ can only manage about 22 ships in a mass transit (and if you're trying to hide an LD in that mass transit it probably takes up the tonnage of 2 ships) -- that's just not a huge number of hide in.

(Again, in fairness, that's the number of SDs that can fit in the tonnage cap. You could potentially fit a lot more small ships; but I have to assume there's some [as yet unstated] limit on the volume you can pack ships into to mass transit. And, thanks to their sails, a destroyer wouldn't actually take up much less room than an SD for transit. It's 1/60th the tonnage but probably, at a swag, takes up 50-80% the space. So even smaller ships seem unlikely to allow a numerous enough swarm to hide another ship in)

Interesting post(s). I think one of my old notions deserves an honorable mention. The very powerful tractors on a spider ship may be able to project a huge field of gravity around itself. Effectively turning the entire volume of the ship into sails. If, as I understand it, sails are nothing but reconfigured wedges which catch the wind (waves). What is wrong with the notion of a warship being encompassed inside a huge sail?

For instance. Let's imagine sailboats. The sails are always fitted at the top of the boat to catch the wind. The wind is stronger at the top of the boat. That isn't true in grav waves where the grav waves are all around. So imagine a sailboat whose sails are built right onto the front deck and the rear deck of the boat; encompassing the boat. On the high seas, all one would see are sails coming at or moving away from you.

In the HV, I was informed from a previous discussion that sails are simply reconfigured wedges. Wedges are very powerful bands of gravity. Spider ships seem to have a natural affinity for gravity. Why can't a spider ship encompass its entire volume within a gravity field, by redirecting its projectors to encompass itself instead of grabbing at the hyper wall? shrug

Thanks for the reminder about needing sails to survive transit. But I was operating on an obviously flawed assumption that towed ships are towed within a larger ship’s compensation field/wedge which would preclude it from needing its own sails. I stand corrected since you say a ship needs at least one sail.


However, if warships can tow pods inside its wedge, then whatever allows an LD to transit might allow it to tow a small ship within its “field”. (Notion held from above).

BTW, an LD should be able to tow an alarming amount of pods inside its [field, wedge].

You are probably correct about the possibility of being able to hide ships within a mass transit. But I thought that the number of ships exiting a WH cannot be determined until they leave the emergence lane. There is a huge band of gravity that should affect energy weapons as well as scans; and impeded scans should affect targeting just like in grav waves. How can every ship be seen or localized within a mass of wedges and intense gravity? Textev has allowed a tactic of hiding ships within wedges. I would think that ships would have to move clear of the emergence lane to be seen, and localized. The scans should at least be momentarily distorted. And if spider ships operate on different frequencies (technologies) than conventional ships, then taken together, the possibly of hiding them, just long enough to cloak and maneuver, might be even greater.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But we also know from the convoy engagement in SVW that a ship can only be towed through a grav wave if it still has one sail operable -- otherwise the grav shear destroys it.

So it seems rather irrelevant whether something could be towed through a wormhole since it seems to survive in the transit lane it'd still need one giant highly visible sail.

Noted. But I am operating on the assumption that larger ships (like pickup trucks ) have a greater towing capacity than smaller ships. Let me explain. For instance, let's consider towed pods. If towed inside the wedge then pods need no sails. Hold that thought for below.

Um, what? When you're under sail you have no wedge; so you're certainly not traitoring anything inside it!?!
And from everything we've been told there's no indication of an equivalent of protecting things by traitoring them inside? (adjacent to?) sails.

(I mean there's isn't really an inside with sails; they stick out perpendicular to the ship. Basically if you think of the ship as the spindle of a record player the sails would be a record on the turntable and another held above ready to drop -- of course that would be if the ship was climbing straight up. The discs are vastly larger than the ship and stick out perpendicular just like records do from the central spindle)

And, like a wedge, anything making contact with the stress grav band of the sail is going to be destroyed by that. (So even if you could make a sail, or similar protective gravity, the entire length of a ship -- instead of from just two short lengths of it -- I'd think anything you tried to tow in that field would be destroyed by the field.)

From what we're told if it's in a grav wave (or a entry/exit lane) and don't have a sail of its own then grav shear WILL destroy it. Doesn't seem to matter how much towing power you have - the towing power isn't protecting the towed item from the grav shear.

penny wrote:You are probably correct about the possibility of being able to hide ships within a mass transit. But I thought that the number of ships exiting a WH cannot be determined until they leave the emergence lane. There is a huge band of gravity that should affect energy weapons as well as scans; and impeded scans should affect targeting just like in grav waves. How can every ship be seen or localized within a mass of wedges and intense gravity? Textev has allowed a tactic of hiding ships within wedges. I would think that ships would have to move clear of the emergence lane to be seen, and localized. The scans should at least be momentarily distorted. And if spider ships operate on different frequencies (technologies) than conventional ships, then taken together, the possibly of hiding them, just long enough to cloak and maneuver, might be even greater.

Again, like in a grav wave, you cannot bring up a wedge inside and entry/exit lane. That'll kill you even quicker than the grav shear on it's own (it's like running a wedge into a vastly more powerful one - you just go boom).

But nothing in the books says there is any trouble seeing or counting ships in the emergence lane. You'd think if they couldn't be seen until they'd cleared it (when they can convert from sails back to wedge, bring up sidewalls, and use missiles) that would have been mentioned in the various descriptions of wormhole defense or the couple of times we've seen newly emerged ships destroyed.
(And previous posts already covered that energy weapons worked just fine shooting into the emergence lane)

But until we know how spider drive ships manage wormholes it's hard to say definitively whether they might be able to hide. (Given the very short range to the defenders and their sensors I tend to assume the answer would be "no"; but we don't actually know until RFC gives us more info)

penny wrote:I think one of my old notions deserves an honorable mention. The very powerful tractors on a spider ship may be able to project a huge field of gravity around itself. Effectively turning the entire volume of the ship into sails. If, as I understand it, sails are nothing but reconfigured wedges which catch the wind (waves). What is wrong with the notion of a warship being encompassed inside a huge sail?

Jonathan_S wrote:Um, what? When you're under sail you have no wedge; so you're certainly not traitoring anything inside it!?!
And from everything we've been told there's no indication of an equivalent of protecting things by traitoring them inside? (adjacent to?) sails.

(I mean there's isn't really an inside with sails; they stick out perpendicular to the ship. Basically if you think of the ship as the spindle of a record player the sails would be a record on the turntable and another held above ready to drop -- of course that would be if the ship was climbing straight up. The discs are vastly larger than the ship and stick out perpendicular just like records do from the central spindle)

And, like a wedge, anything making contact with the stress grav band of the sail is going to be destroyed by that. (So even if you could make a sail, or similar protective gravity, the entire length of a ship -- instead of from just two short lengths of it -- I'd think anything you tried to tow in that field would be destroyed by the field.)

From what we're told if it's in a grav wave (or a entry/exit lane) and don't have a sail of its own then grav shear WILL destroy it. Doesn't seem to matter how much towing power you have - the towing power isn't protecting the towed item from the grav shear.

The idea of wrapping the ship in a huge field of gravity is just reinventing the spherical side wall. As Jonathan_S says the sail is a flat surface so it can achieve the correct angle with the gravity shear wave; a sphere presents all angles to the wave and so cannot tune itself.

Jonathan_S wrote:But we also know from the convoy engagement in SVW that a ship can only be towed through a grav wave if it still has one sail operable -- otherwise the grav shear destroys it.

So it seems rather irrelevant whether something could be towed through a wormhole since it seems to survive in the transit lane it'd still need one giant highly visible sail.

penny wrote:Noted. But I am operating on the assumption that larger ships (like pickup trucks ) have a greater towing capacity than smaller ships. Let me explain. For instance, let's consider towed pods. If towed inside the wedge then pods need no sails. Hold that thought for below.

Jonathan_S wrote:Um, what? When you're under sail you have no wedge; so you're certainly not traitoring anything inside it!?!
And from everything we've been told there's no indication of an equivalent of protecting things by traitoring them inside? (adjacent to?) sails.

(I mean there's isn't really an inside with sails; they stick out perpendicular to the ship. Basically if you think of the ship as the spindle of a record player the sails would be a record on the turntable and another held above ready to drop -- of course that would be if the ship was climbing straight up. The discs are vastly larger than the ship and stick out perpendicular just like records do from the central spindle)

And, like a wedge, anything making contact with the stress grav band of the sail is going to be destroyed by that. (So even if you could make a sail, or similar protective gravity, the entire length of a ship -- instead of from just two short lengths of it -- I'd think anything you tried to tow in that field would be destroyed by the field.)

From what we're told if it's in a grav wave (or a entry/exit lane) and don't have a sail of its own then grav shear WILL destroy it. Doesn't seem to matter how much towing power you have - the towing power isn't protecting the towed item from the grav shear.

penny wrote:You are probably correct about the possibility of being able to hide ships within a mass transit. But I thought that the number of ships exiting a WH cannot be determined until they leave the emergence lane. There is a huge band of gravity that should affect energy weapons as well as scans; and impeded scans should affect targeting just like in grav waves. How can every ship be seen or localized within a mass of wedges and intense gravity? Textev has allowed a tactic of hiding ships within wedges. I would think that ships would have to move clear of the emergence lane to be seen, and localized. The scans should at least be momentarily distorted. And if spider ships operate on different frequencies (technologies) than conventional ships, then taken together, the possibly of hiding them, just long enough to cloak and maneuver, might be even greater.

Jonathan wrote:Again, like in a grav wave, you cannot bring up a wedge inside and entry/exit lane. That'll kill you even quicker than the grav shear on it's own (it's like running a wedge into a vastly more powerful one - you just go boom).

But nothing in the books says there is any trouble seeing or counting ships in the emergence lane. You'd think if they couldn't be seen until they'd cleared it (when they can convert from sails back to wedge, bring up sidewalls, and use missiles) that would have been mentioned in the various descriptions of wormhole defense or the couple of times we've seen newly emerged ships destroyed.
(And previous posts already covered that energy weapons worked just fine shooting into the emergence lane)

But until we know how spider drive ships manage wormholes it's hard to say definitively whether they might be able to hide. (Given the very short range to the defenders and their sensors I tend to assume the answer would be "no"; but we don't actually know until RFC gives us more info)

I gotta get over the notion of wedges during a WH transit, but above it was simply an example.

I am not implying that wedges are present in grav waves or transit. I was only using how wedges protect towed objects like pods from the compensation equation as an example.

Although I never quite understood how pods can be towed inside wedges but not protected by the wedge from proximity kills. Inside sidewalls, sure, no protection. But text says pods are towed inside wedges, not inside sidewalls. No?

Anyway, when I think of sails, my typecast brain immediately imagines a construction designed to catch the wind. Wet navy sails also protect the ship from large dangerous waves and very strong winds by being able to maneuver to receive the least amount of impact from either.

In a grav wave, sails protect the ship and provide propulsion as well. Same as a wet navy. But how exactly are sails protecting the warship? I can see how they provide propulsion, but protection, no. I can accept it as I do, but if indeed sails provide protection for the ship from the effects of grav waves, they should also protect anything towed close to the hull of the ship from grav waves. Or anything mounted on the hull of the ship would be destroyed. Like arrays, antennas, etc. So I assume the immense expanse of the sails cut a swarthe in the path of the oncoming grav waves. They literally plow the field if you will.

So whatever mechanism protects the hull of the ship, not to mention the ship, should also be able to protect anything towed within a much larger grav field, sails, or whatever a much larger ship like an LD might produce.


Note: Incoming transits should produce a lot of gravity and or interference. Upward translations produce no visible signs. But downward translations do. Do these same metrics apply to WH transits?

penny wrote:In a grav wave, sails protect the ship and provide propulsion as well. Same as a wet navy. But how exactly are sails protecting the warship? I can see how they provide propulsion, but protection, no. I can accept it as I do, but if indeed sails provide protection for the ship from the effects of grav waves, they should also protect anything towed close to the hull of the ship from grav waves. Or anything mounted on the hull of the ship would be destroyed. Like arrays, antennas, etc. So I assume the immense expanse of the sails cut a swarthe in the path of the oncoming grav waves. They literally plow the field if you will.

I don't think it can quite be plowing the field because the bow (or stern if you're decelerating) sticks out past the sail so all the sensors and antenna there are ahead of any plowing effect.

(Again, the ship is basically the spindle poking through the center of the disk of the sail. And since each sail projects perpendicularly (of the long axis of the hull) from the fore or aft alpha ring. And since those the hammerheads are out beyond the impeller rings they're exposed past the sail.

But I don't recall the books or RFC ever expanding on precisely how the sails protect the ships where otherwise "turbulence would tear them apart" [SVW]. The most I think we got was the generic statement from OBS.

On Basilisk Station wrote:Improved Warshawskis had tended to offset the first difficulty by extending their detection range and warning ships of turbulence. With enough warning time, a ship could usually trim its sails to ride through turbulence by adjusting their density and "grab factor," though failure to trim in time remained deadly

But that just says that properly adjusted sails do protect the ship - but not how.

So without that detail it's unclear how far from the ship such protections extend. (And most of his focus was on making it clear that missiles won't work in a grav wave -- as he'd already explained how a wedge touching a grav wave was instantly destroyed along with the thing producing the wedge. He didn't spend any time explaining the parameters of items without wedge or sail might last under various conditions within the wave. Well, other than pointing out a ship losing both sails would be lost; without any consorts having any attempt to save her or her crew - while a ship losing only one sail could be saved by prompt action of a consort towing her to safety)



Though even if a ship could tow a pod through a grav wave or a wormhole that doesn't mean they could tow a ship with its engines down -- which I believe was where this towing discussion started

penny wrote:I asked awhile ago how long it takes for the MAN to bring up its Spider drive? … Then go to emergency acceleration and evasive maneuvers?

Let's say it's instantaneous, the folding of the Warshawski sails is also instantaneous, and can be achieved inside the emergence lane. At emergency acceleration of 250 gravities, a spider ship needs 90 seconds to clear the 10,000 km lane and 8.2 minutes to get out of the wormhole's hyperlimit.

Given that the ship was not stealthy when it transited, with a pair of 200-km wide shining Warshawski sails, it was locked on. Its position is very well known and is being observed, regardless of stealth. There's no way it will go unnoticed.

If the MAN does a mass transit with impeller-driven warships, say, insignificant stolen or acquired SLN warships leading the formation, will any trailing MAN ships have enough time to “cloak” then evade?

The question is whether they'll be lost in the noise. So this is a question of competency of the defenders, not of MAN's stealth. If the defenders are competent and can track several dozen starships transiting, they will not miss the spider-driven ones. They will also go to alert and sweep the entire area as soon as hostiles are detected, if they are competent.

So I think this proposition is also a suicide mission for the spider ships, not just the impeller ones.

Question. We all know that ships can be towed through hyper. Can a ship be towed through a WH? Also, I assume ships are normally towed, trailing behind the towing ship. Can a ship be “towed ahead.” Wait… what? Can powerful enough presser beams press smaller ships into a WH ahead of itself?

Good question. It starts with the same question as towing through a grav wave. So I think the answer is "no, they can't be towed" because the position of the Warshawski sails would be all wrong. Maybe if the towed ship is projecting its own sails it would survive, but then there's no stealth.

But wait, it gets worse: unlike a grav wave, a WH transit requires use of the hypergenerator and the volume of the towing ship will not include the towed one. So you need the towed ship to also use its own hypergenerator.

What would be the point of towing a ship that has a working hypergenerator and Warshawski sails?

The best you could do is carry them inside a freighter, such as how the Ghosts were carried. But then the one thing you wouldn't do is open your cargo doors underneath everyone's prying eyes.

Question 2. The author said no unmanned warships. But what is the size of the smallest skeleton crew? A skeleton crew of sacrificial lambs.

Ships seem to need at least a few dozen people to operate. That would be the case for an MAN frigate-sized ship with sails and hypergenerator.