MA: Most Optimal Kinetic Strike Targets

darrell wrote:I can also see the GA capturing at least one of the lenny dets with it's database intact. Now the GA knows where darius is and can finish the detwilers for good.

kzt wrote:Just like capturing a few million RHN personnel and close to a hundred ships got them bolt hole, right?

darrell wrote:did you notice I said my crystal ball was cracked?

The vast majority of any lenny dets captured will have the location of Darius scrubbed, but if battle damage caused the grav pltes to fail on a spider drive ship running at 150G's the crew would be dead and unable to scrub the computers.

or what if some jr officer or sr enlisted had the location of darius on a hand comp? Either of the two methods would be an easy way to get the location of Darius.

The problem with the grav plates failing and killing the crew on the Leonard Detweiler's before they could scrub the computers is that battle damage is localized to where it occurred.

On an impeller drive ship, if that damage occurs to the inertial compensator, it has ship wide consequences as the crew is instantly turned into anchovy paste. (Single point of failure, and the Honorverse physics do not allow redundant inertial compensators.)

On a Leonard Detweiler, if the gravity plates are damaged to the point they immediately stop functioning, the consequences to the crew (anchovy paste) are confined to the gravity plates that actually took damage, and do not extend ship wide--thereby allowing most of the crew to survive.

Even if the damage was to a power distribution run providing power to the gravity plates, Honorverse navies are big on redundancy where it is possible, and therefore the gravity plates would be designed to be powered by at least two power sources, each with its own power distribution network, and isolated from each other under normal operations as far as possible--allowing the crew to survive. I see no reason(s) why the Mesan Alignment Navy is or would be any different in this respect.

darrell wrote:
The vast majority of any lenny dets captured will have the location of Darius scrubbed, but if battle damage caused the grav pltes to fail on a spider drive ship running at 150G's the crew would be dead and unable to scrub the computers.

or what if some jr officer or sr enlisted had the location of darius on a hand comp? Either of the two methods would be an easy way to get the location of Darius.

The obvious countermeasure is to ensure that none of the ships going on operational missions keep the location of Darius in their databanks and only nav officers (who are sworn to secrecy) have knowledge of the location.

Basically as you leave on a mission you pick a system out of the direct line of travel between Darius and the target; pause there scrub all Darius information from the databank and depart on the mission.

What they ships do still have is the location of an arbitrarily selected system or deepspace rendezvous point where they can meet a pilot ship to lead them back to Darius. So you'd have to have a double layer failure. First the ship in combat gets damaged enough that they are unable to successfully scrub the rally point, then a trap at the rally point would have to capture the pilot ship (and before it was able to itself scrub the location of Darius from its nav system).

Add as many curlicues onto that as you like in terms of how the pilot ship confirms everything is OK prior to establishing contact; or layers of encryption on the data, etc, etc.


Haven was able to go a step further with Bolthole because they didn't need to use it as a base to operate out of. So warships built there never had to return, they could operate out of known bases once their existence was revealed - so never had to set up a method to return. I doubt there will be time for the MAlign to have set up other less secret systems as spider bases; so I'm guessing the Sharks and Lenny Dets will have to return to Darius between ops. But that doesn't mean they need to have its coordinates with them during combat.

Depending on your point of view, the Alignment plan for the break-up of the SL and trimming back of the capasity and ability of the major intended hit man (Haven) to smash the League militarily while shattering it from a political and economic standpoint is now badly out of whack and off the rails.
The Alignment is no longer in the shadows. There are a lot of capable people working on the problem of further identifying it and finding it. That the Alignment has a secret base (Darius) and a fully industrialized planet (and we presume system) to support and hide it from direct attack is helpful but not going to do what must be done to break up the League.
The intent was to orchestrate the shattering of the League and then gather in the pieces under the cloak of the RF which was also to be the seeding, inoculation points and distribution source (and showcases of) the Alignment's philosophy and moral (if you can call it that) basis. Crushing the Beowulf Code and rubbing Beowulf's face in the acendency of what will eventualy be reaized as the Detweiler Uplift is all gravy but takes up way too much of the interest of the Alignment leadership. Of course, creating yet another series of genetic super-humans with the Alignment genenetic cast system firmly on top and using "normal" humans (all the normal humans) as, at best, a casual source of raw materials and feedstock for exploitation is just part of the nessisary changes to "improve" humans.

I have to wonder just how many Lenny Dets are in production and what else is being built. How many SD sized ships with spider drive weapons (like the grazer torpedoes)? That was seemingly set in motion to take out the known/projected infrastructure of at least Haven and probably some of the former SL systems to grease the path to SL destruction. Yes, the RF systems SDFs were to be source of the "conventional" naval strength but that is hedged in needing for them not being seen as taking more than defensive type movers to protect the growing sets of systems as the RF pieces band together for safety. And why would you build just Ghost scouts, Shark trainers/testbeds and ONLY SD sized spider drive warships. Yes, they are building Streak Drive ships but those -that we have seen- are not warships, we haven't been told that any of the Streak Drive ships are even armed, let alone that there are warships built with this feature.

Why or what keeps the Alignment from trying a "Rat Poison" operation and doing major kenetic strikes (think size of Chicxulub impact in effect) using spider drive ships and weapons to deliver the hits to the "impediments" to the plan like Manticore and just throw everybody int chaos? Sure, they wanted to avoid a technical EE event with Oyster Bay but if things keep going down hill for The Plan (and it will), can'y you see the Alignment attempting yet another adjustment on the fly and stand back to let the resulting chaos clear much of the field for them. They can always follow up with more pinpoint hits as new leadership rises.

Brigade XO wrote:And why would you build just Ghost scouts, Shark trainers/testbeds and ONLY SD sized spider drive warships. Yes, they are building Streak Drive ships but those -that we have seen- are not warships, we haven't been told that any of the Streak Drive ships are even armed, let alone that there are warships built with this feature.

True, we haven't been told that the Ghosts, Sharks, and Lenny Dets also mount the more capable hyper generator that is the "Streak Drive". But it seems pretty silly to leave it out. (Maybe on the Sharks since they were never intended for operational use; and higher strategic speed in your training ships doesn't seem necessary). But in a new build design there should be little downside to putting in the bigger more capable generator...