Wormhole Assault: MA Style

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Though ships do need to have their sails up to transit. So that's a couple hundred km radius disc sticking out perpendicular from their hulls.

However the emergence lane's grav effects are probably around 25,000 km across (and 90,000 km long) so there's still lots of volume to put ships side by side even if they do need to stay hundreds of km apart.

And that would comprise a significant amount of area where missiles and mines would fear to tread.

I still think such an unorthodox attack along with taking out specific forts by an imploding bomb or nanite infection will do the trick. Then the LDs can remain hidden behind the junction playing cat and mouse with any other fort trying to work its way to the rescue. As soon as a fort pokes its head around the junction on the negative hemisphere, it gets destroyed. Remember, the LDs would still be hidden. It would be the same cat and mouse tactic at play Theisman used around Blackbird. And, sending probes around the junction as a tactic my niece suggested Honor should have used to detect Theisman wouldn't work. I'm betting they won't detect the LDs, and their wedges won't work anyway.

Well yes, missiles and mines do "fear to tread" within the roughly 90,000 X 25,000 km emergence zone - because the grav shear will destroy them before they could penetrate very far.

There's a reasons that missiles with contact nukes or even the early burn heads weren't considered for initial defense against a hostile transit - the grav shear in the arrival lane would destroy them before they could reach effective range of their target. So a minefield can't be laid within the arrival lane. However antiship mines in the Honoverse are mostly standoff laserhead devices and, like laserhead missiles, their 30,000 - 50,000 standoff range allows them to engage targets at the heart of the emergence zone from outside the grav shear effects. So you can have a minefield positioned along the flanks of the emergence zone's cylinder. And, in fact, we know from OBS that during time of war there will be such mines and they will automatically engage anything without the correct IFF signal.



Also fort isn't likely to "pokes its head around the junction on the negative hemisphere" - there are shells of forts permanently stationed on all sides of the Junction - in order to ward off hostile approach through normal space from any direction. You'd need to destroy all the forts over something like 60% of the sphere of Junction space to deny the remaining ones a direct line of sight around the Junction to all approach vectors.
And that still doesn't help that much because there's no evidence that the terminii themselves obscure, distort, or block electromagnetic signals. (Though they probably do screw up the signal to noise ratio for grav sensors - but those are already the least likely way to detect an LD)
Blowing up a few forts isn't going to let you sneak in and use the junction for cover to play hide and seek with the remaining forts.

Also, I think you've overstating how big an obstruction the Junction is. Sure the area within the hyper limit is vast - up to 4,188,790,204,786,390,000 cubic km. But the grav shear areas, where wedge are fatal and you can't lay a mine, are an infinitesimal part of that (that only the seven 90,000 x 25,000 km emergency zone cylinders); about 0.029% of the Junction.

So you can absolutely send a recon drone into the Junction area as long as you avoid that 3/1000ths of a percent of its volume.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Forts can make 50 gravities, LDs are known to push to 150 gravities without the crew suffering increased gravity. So a fort can't chase an LD or evade one. But it can move to a position it would have direct line of sight if it needed.

Sharks can make 150. We assume the LDs are similar. But it's an assumption.

Jonathan_S wrote:
Also, I think you've overstating how big an obstruction the Junction is. Sure the area within the hyper limit is vast - up to 4,188,790,204,786,390,000 cubic km. But the grav shear areas, where wedge are fatal and you can't lay a mine, are an infinitesimal part of that (that only the seven 90,000 x 25,000 km emergency zone cylinders); about 0.029% of the Junction.

So you can absolutely send a recon drone into the Junction area as long as you avoid that 3/1000ths of a percent of its volume.

I think you are making a big assumption there. Do you have some text that clearly says that?

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Forts can make 50 gravities, LDs are known to push to 150 gravities without the crew suffering increased gravity. So a fort can't chase an LD or evade one. But it can move to a position it would have direct line of sight if it needed.

Sharks can make 150. We assume the LDs are similar. But it's an assumption.

The problem is not how much the spider can push. We do know that it's higher the longer the ship is (more surface area to mount tractors on). An LD being bigger than a Shark, so it stands to reason it could accelerate more.

The limiting factor is the compensation by the grav plates. Textev says that MAlign technology allows them to fully compensate up to 150 G. So both a Shark and an LD can run to 150 G without inconveniencing on the crew. We're also told that they can go to 250 G in an emergency, with the crew suffering something like 6 or 9 G (don't remember the exact value). Being who they are, they may have bioengineered their crews to withstand more gravities, but as long as they are still human, 9 G is quite a lot and can't be sustained for more than a handful of minutes. More importantly, the crew can't move about under that acceleration, so damage control is also very limited. The entire ship at that point is under the control of the AIs and we have no evidence that MAlign computer tech is any better than the rest of the Galaxy's.

Though necessity is the mother of invention.

That was the state of the art when the Shark design was finalized for construction. How long ago was that?

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:
Also, I think you've overstating how big an obstruction the Junction is. Sure the area within the hyper limit is vast - up to 4,188,790,204,786,390,000 cubic km. But the grav shear areas, where wedge are fatal and you can't lay a mine, are an infinitesimal part of that (that only the seven 90,000 x 25,000 km emergency zone cylinders); about 0.029% of the Junction.

So you can absolutely send a recon drone into the Junction area as long as you avoid that 3/1000ths of a percent of its volume.

I think you are making a big assumption there. Do you have some text that clearly says that?

No. There are definitely some assumption in there; based off how the arrival is described in some RFC posts.

(And even from those that there's some reasonable assumptions and calculations from same to get the distances based on information he has provided about length of time it takes clear the Jucntion arrival zone, the acceleration with the Trevor's Star arrival zone, plus the vulnerability of ships within it to laserheads and laserhead mines)

We do know that once an arriving ship gets to the end of the arrival zone it can transition from sails to wedge, allowing it to bring up a sidewall and launch missiles/decoys. And we do know that at Manticore that take a warship 4.5 minutes to reach.

We don't know for certain that there aren't any additional dangerous grav shear spots scattered around the Junction; even though the only ones described are those directly associated with the 7 termini and their approach/departure zone.

But despite no such additional obstacles being mentioned in the books it's not impossible that some exist, and the normal traffic control lanes to and from the termini simply route clear of them in a way not even worth mentioning.

cthia wrote:It would seem that if the LDs can maneuver behind the MWJ coming in on a vector within the width of the MWJ it could effectively use the MWJ as a shield against the return fire of GA ships exiting the Wormhole, or from certain Forts who cannot fire through the MWJ. GA ships exiting the MWJ cannot target LDs that are on a bearing through the Origin. Wouldn't the wormhole eat all missiles fired into it?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:This depends on how close they can get to dozens of forts and multiple hundred ships with blaring active sensors. This is the single densest-traffic cubic light-second in the known Galaxy. The chances of detection go up exponentially with the number of ships and this is the place where the most ships can be found.

True, and true. But, all of the many ships and their sensors are not coordinating with each other. It is most likely going to come down to one particular ship that either will or won't detect the Lenny. Sure, the middle of downtown MWJ is congested traffic, but there's no reason the LD can't remain on the outskirts of town until time to move in.

My guess is that the LD won't be detected in time. And once it gets into optimal firing position. Game over. Once it gets into optimal firing position, it would have seeded the area with its own surprises.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:So even if we disagree that below one light-second the LDs are detectable, this is not a good place to park an LD or several. They will be detected, period. And even if they weren't before firing, they will be after.

Will they be detected? And if they are detected, will they be detected in time? My vision of the LDs is that you cannot let something that big get that close. Once an LD gets into optimal firing position, it won't matter much if you "once knew" where it "was."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We don't know what happens to vectors not leading to transit. My guess is that nothing happens.

We do know what happens. All the Harvest Joys that didn't wait for the final results told us. They are destroyed if their descent into the "maelstrom" is on the wrong bearing.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That means that even if a fort does not have a direct line of sight to the attacking LD, the other 11 will.

That depends on which of us is right about whether the LD can operate close enough to kiss you. It'd be fitting if they had a maneuver called the pickpocket. LOL

But if an LD is hugging and hiding behind "the wall" of the junction, the remaining forts - that the operation didn't specifically take out initially - have no shot against an LD which has intentionally chosen that exact moment to announce it's arrival.

ThinksMarkedly wrote: And the mines and satellites controlled by that blocked fort will.

Don't the LDs have to be detected, first, to be successfully fired upon? Can a blocked fort still control it's mines? Can autonomous mines attack something they don't detect? They will be firing blind. And of course, they can't fire thru the junction.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:There's nothing big enough to hide behind around the Junction and no angle in which a ship could avoid being struck by graser fire.

Small enough to hide is what you want. The LDs can certainly hide "behind" the much larger wake of the transit lanes. Plus, as I mentioned before, we can't be certain of any presumed effect on grasers (or the effect on targeting itself) which are fired directly thru the junction trying to hit something whose location you are not quite sure of. While you are being fired upon yourself from the hell and brimstone the LD has unleased.

cthia wrote:Small enough to hide is what you want. The LDs can certainly hide "behind" the much larger wake of the transit lanes. Plus, as I mentioned before, we can't be certain of any presumed effect on grasers (or the effect on targeting itself) which are fired directly thru the junction trying to hit something whose location you are not quite sure of. While you are being fired upon yourself from the hell and brimstone the LD has unleased.

Uncompromising Honor opens with them pulling ten thousand grasers out of ex-SLN SDs to use around the MWJ. I think it's safe to conclude that the RMN isn't worried about the Junction interfering with energy fire control.

Even if there are any accuracy issues(as there are when shooting through sidewalls), the sheer quantity of shots and firing angles available compensates for this.

cthia wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We don't know what happens to vectors not leading to transit. My guess is that nothing happens.

We do know what happens. All the Harvest Joys that didn't wait for the final results told us. They are destroyed if their descent into the "maelstrom" is on the wrong bearing.

If that vector happens to take you through one of the Junctions seven termini entrance/exits; or across one of the grav shear departure/arrival lanes - yes you'd be destroyed.

(And yes, kzt had a point that we don't know for sure that the entirety of the test of the junction area is safe to transit through - but there is plenty of space that is (see entire battlefleets forming up after clearing the arrival lane but before leaving the general terminus area)

Though no description of wormhole exploration mentions any significant number of lost survey ships; not even for the earliest explorations. So all those "Harvest Joys that didn't wait for the final results" seem more notional than historical fact. (In contrast we are told a few times of the significant losses to ships in the early days of hyper travel - so if a lot of early wormhole survey ships had been lost you'd expect that to have come up)

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:Small enough to hide is what you want. The LDs can certainly hide "behind" the much larger wake of the transit lanes. Plus, as I mentioned before, we can't be certain of any presumed effect on grasers (or the effect on targeting itself) which are fired directly thru the junction trying to hit something whose location you are not quite sure of. While you are being fired upon yourself from the hell and brimstone the LD has unleased.

Uncompromising Honor opens with them pulling ten thousand grasers out of ex-SLN SDs to use around the MWJ. I think it's safe to conclude that the RMN isn't worried about the Junction interfering with energy fire control.

Even if there are any accuracy issues(as there are when shooting through sidewalls), the sheer quantity of shots and firing angles available compensates for this.

I recall that. I think I also recall Honor stating how they would be used to shred metal transiting the junction. Plus, I was under the impression all of those mounts would be part of a single platform. In my knowledge, trained on the emergence zone. But, a single platform has to be incorrect if it is going to protect the entire junction. No?

At any rate, if I am correct, it doesn't change the fact the RMN doesn't expect any targeting problems, applied to the norm. No mere enemy is supposed to be able to get close enough to hide behind the junction.