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cthia wrote:One of my friends said quite some time ago that he enjoyed UH except the main battle. He opined...

"Honor could have rented her warships from a tuxedo company, and not lost any of the deposit."

Many of us have commented in previous threads how disappointing the Solarian forces and their Malign puppet-masters turned out to be. The Malign should have ensured that the SLN could have put up a better fight, instead it was as though the leadership had a lobotomy. After all the build up in the earlier books about the 500 pound gorilla, the only successes against Manticore were destroyers that did not have their wedges up and the older ships at Hypatia.

Why would you expect them to notice any emissions? You have to be within light hours for a ship to detect wedges or even hyper translations. And I’d expect they are not radiating in RF.

So if you jump in way out there and start to deploy the huge sensors needed to locate signals at light months then you just came a really long way to die.

Brigade XO wrote:A scout tranlating back to normal space way out from Darius (having first determined that there was a system there to look at) probably isn't going to fact the level of system sensor and early warning net as Manticore but it is possible. Unless the scout essentialy comes in ballistic from where it made it's translation, it's going to be showing energy. While it will see all the energy signatures and transmissions comming from the system and eventualy get to see where anything using an impeller wedge is located and moving, it is not going to see any active spider drive ships.

Agreed. That's why said scout should start the clock for translating out from the moment it translates in. 5 minutes, no more, come what may. Absence of proof that a ship is around is proof of absence of that ship. Especially when we're talking about an enemy that has shown to have quite good stealth technology.

Two little challanges there. One is that even with minimal maneuvering to shape a course by or perhaps just outside the hyper limit, they are going to have to maneuver and sending RDs means that unless they want to have them self destruct way the hell after exiting the system, would be picking them up on the "far side". The other is that I would expect the Alignment to have spider drive ships posted out on picket duty and that is what is going to respond to any scouting penetration. The scout isn't going to see it comming and the 1st time it becomes aware it has a live problem will be with missles incoming. Heck, get a Grazer Torpedo on an intercept course and you won't know it's there till the Grazer burns right through the ship- lengthwise.

Agreed, they are going to have to recover from the "far side." That's total 10 minutes in the system, in two separate 5-minute presences. The chance of interception is very small.

Spider-driven ships on picket duty are completely useless. They are slow as molasses and can't catch any manoeuvring scout, unless the scout is unwittingly coming straight at the picket ship. We've discussed this before and unless the scout has a specific destination that the picket ship knows it will get to, the picket cannot get to missile range. Spider-driven graser torpedoes are no better, since they are still limited to a few thousand G acceleration -- more than the scout, but too little to close the range before the clock runs out and the scout translates out.

I'll grant you that the GA doesn't know (yet) that the spider drive is slow. Maybe Simões told them, maybe he didn't know either. So I'm assuming they're assuming that the acceleration is at least as good as and probably better than impeller-driven ships. That's why the scout can't afford to linger. Translate in, make a quick determination if they should launch drones, then launch them and hyper out.

Also at the moment, the best way of finding Darius is finding a person who knows something about how to get there without death by nanite. After the Final Flourish, that may only be someone who is operating one of the Alignment special operations ships and some people in the RF. Nobody has any idea that the RF is a catspaw of the Alighment.

If the MAlign were smart they'd lie low for quite some time and not send agents out. They will instead be arrogant and send agents and handlers, which means there'll be a paper and money trail for Cachat and Zilwicki and Ruth Winton to follow. That's how I think they'll find Darius.

A real question is if the Alignment is going to take another swipe at the GA or Beowulf out of spite. They could have whole departments just thining up false flags and diversion tactics to cause trouble.

I think they will, which will leave more breadcrumbs to follow.

cthia wrote:And for the record, your claim is only true comparing warships. It falls flat if comparing mines, and forts. Bracketing the fact that it fails if comparing warships at the end of the day.

So what? They had 450 SDs. Round it off to 1000 SDs, and it's still an excuse.

Who says there weren't forts and mines? Though with the level of ship traffic in the system, a minefield might be very hazardous. But forts might have been there all along and surrendered alongside the rest of the SLN when Honor came calling. Forts aren't useful if the enemy has all the time in the universe to lob missiles from outside the fort's range.

Honor came with 450 SDs of her own, plus a fleet train for an extended battle. She could have parked the GF in Jupiter and taken HMS Imperator to Earth: Kingsford was going to surrender after that little demonstration around Ganymede, regardless how how many SDs, forts, mines and other conventional (read: known to the GF) technology the SLN could have deployed.

Okay, the SLN didn't fear any of the KNOWN contestants in the HV. But we both seem to agree that they COULDN'T have known of every threat in the Universe. How could anyone have! I recall a discussion in some thread about "RFC's" likely intransigence regarding introducing unknown aliens in the HV at some point. There will never be any Borg, Species 9572, the Dominion, Cardassians, Klingons, or any other unknown alien species. Even bracketing the fact that there IS the Malign. But even if we bracket that fact, we cannot erase human nature. The same human nature existing on Earth that fears invasion from an an alien species.

And what would you suggest they do to prepare for that? And how would that have prepared them for the visit by the GF?

The Cradle of Civilization should not have crimped on ANY defenses. I'm not saying that more mines and more forts would have helped. But dammit, they should have been there anyway.

Again, why do you think they weren't there?

And they didn't even scratch Honor's paint! They didn't scratch the fucking paint. They didn't scratch it!

How do you propose they do that?

I expected a million fucking LACs in the Sol system, even if they were all worthless. People excited about finally getting some action. Even if they died. The SLN didn't have any Quality, anywhere! A hard pill to swallow in itself. Fine, I'll swallow it anyway and choke on it.

Mind you that LACs were on the way out for the past 50 years. They and frigates just weren't survivable enough against any decent warship. So Sol would be the first system that the SLN would have upgraded from LACs to something better.

Let's say that they had 2000 destroyers in the system. What should the captains of those destroyers and the admirals commanding the squadrons do after Kingsford sent the order to surrender? The destroyers that Honor brought as escort to the GF's superdreadnoughts would be enough to deal with all those defenders, even if they all worked together. Which they wouldn't, so you'd have penny packets of squadrons fighting independently from one another.

You might say that if the SLN defence forces at Sol were 450 SDs, 1000 CAs and 2000 DDs, Kingsford wouldn't have surrendered. Really? After everything that he'd found out about being manipulated and after the GF trashed Naval Station Ganymede exactly like it wanted to as if the defenders weren't there in the first place?

"Honor could have rented her warships from a tuxedo company, and not lost any of the deposit."

Yep.

tlb wrote:Thank you for the numbers, I do not follow them as well as I do the political aspects of the stories. Does this include the consideration that only about one third of the ships sent to attack Beowulf returned?

Weren't those BCs, like at Hypatia? I don't think the SLN deployed SDs after Raging Justice because it was clear those were not just not survivable, they were slower than everything else. Plus, BC captains might actually know what they were doing.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

I'll grant you that the GA doesn't know (yet) that the spider drive is slow. Maybe Simões told them, maybe he didn't know either. So I'm assuming they're assuming that the acceleration is at least as good as and probably better than impeller-driven ships. That's why the scout can't afford to linger. Translate in, make a quick determination if they should launch drones, then launch them and hyper out.

From the tracks of the missiles, they could get a fairly good guess of direction they came from. Once they correlate that with investigations of sensor "ghosts", they should identify which one was the actual attack run. With the timing, they can deduce the acceleration that the attack ships could achieve. Thus, they will know that what ever drive was used had an acceleration that as a fraction of what an impeller-driven ship could achieve.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I'll grant you that the GA doesn't know (yet) that the spider drive is slow. Maybe Simões told them, maybe he didn't know either. So I'm assuming they're assuming that the acceleration is at least as good as and probably better than impeller-driven ships. That's why the scout can't afford to linger. Translate in, make a quick determination if they should launch drones, then launch them and hyper out.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:From the tracks of the missiles, they could get a fairly good guess of direction they came from. Once they correlate that with investigations of sensor "ghosts", they should identify which one was the actual attack run. With the timing, they can deduce the acceleration that the attack ships could achieve. Thus, they will know that what ever drive was used had an acceleration that as a fraction of what an impeller-driven ship could achieve.

If you are talking about the Yawata Strike, then you should be aware that the weapons were traveling in a ballistic state for part of their journey. But even if that were not true, you would only be calculating the acceleration used, not the acceleration possible; although I cannot give reasons why those should be different. From Mission of Honor, chapter 28:

The torpedoes had begun accelerating well before they or any of the missile pods accompanying them reached the range at which any transmission from the communications platforms the Ghost-class scout ships had emplaced could have reached them. On the other hand, they had less need for any additional information than the missiles did. They already knew where to find their targets, and they pulled steadily away from their purely ballistic pod companions.

The Alignment is still made up of Humans. It is true that the intent is to move away from that but only in the direction of "uplifted" and improved humans, better than the Normals. At the moment it seems that the products of the genetics labs can breed sucessfully with Normals.

That is not to say that there aren't specific individuals which were tailored to be sterile.

What we see is the -for the Alignment- that the Seccie population of Mesa seems to be able to have children just fine. Or at least no problems have been noted. The various "genies" like the mod's Stephanie's and her parents were gene-locked to be dominant but otherwise they can interbreed with other humans. Same apparently for the group of people that Thandy came from. Modified for specific world type. Heck, you read about Mesa and the Detweiler Plan and it sure sounds like Detwiler had his followers children modifed to Mesa more than terraform it.

What we see of the Alpha and other Star Lines is that their children are ALL provided to them and while they may contain DNA from the two partners, there are modifications in the ongoing improvement. The Alignment probably has a long way to go to stop being human enough to crossbread with Normals.

But that is a very minor consideration to them at this point.'

Edit: And now as I keep reading I see ThinksMarkedly made essentially the same point.

cthia wrote:
BUT! That is from the mind of the author. There is no way in HELL anybody living in the HV can know that. I don't know of any other Navy that didn't do as much as they could to defend their system. What makes it all even less of an excuse, is that the SLN weren't preoccupied for most of their existence fighting battle after battle. They weren't losing a Queen's coffer full of money on war. They weren't always playing catch-up like poor Shannon. What the hell were they doing? They are the only navy with the time to ponder the unknown. It isn't like any unknown actually existed.

HAVEN: Mines. Forts.

MANTICORE: Mines. Forts.

ANDERMANI: Not sure, but I've laid down my bet.


The Cradle of Civilization should not have crimped on ANY defenses. I'm not saying that more mines and more forts would have helped. But dammit, they should have been there anyway. No other Navy thought warships alone was enough defense. And the Sol system wasn't ALWAYS brainwashed by the Mandarins. Hell, those 450 SDs were strategically tethered to the Home System by ball-and-chain since the system couldn't do a damn thing to protect itself. I'm sorry guys, I'll never accept any excuse why the richest system in the HV, and for so damn long, didn't have forts on top of forts on top of forts. It isn't like they couldn't afford it. It isn't like they weren't aware of the IDEA of Forts. It isn't like THEY didn't have the time. Regardless of whether it would have helped at the end of the day that Honor went off her meds. It doesn't make a damn bit of sense that the Cerberus system was better defended than the Sol system! Bracketing warships. I recall visitors having to tiptoe thru Cerberus. We're talking about the Cradle of Civilization.

And they didn't even scratch Honor's paint! They didn't scratch the fucking paint. They didn't scratch it!

What proof is there that Sol didn't have defensive minefields? BTW I can't actually find anything in the books that states Haven has minefields (and just a mention or two of it having forts); though I'm sure they do.

The only systems I can find mines specifically mentioned for are Maticore's Junction, Cerberus, Hancock, and Barnett. Heck I didn't find a mention of minefields at the Lynx or Basilisk termini defenses; but it'd be inconceivable that the forts Manticore put in weren't backed by the same kinds of minefields that help protect the Junction. Though it is mentioned that "Minefields were a part of almost any area defense plan" [AoV]; but they appear so commonplace that they're not worth of mention in the books unless they affect the story.

And remember, Kingsford stood down Sol's defenses while Honor was still over 227 million km from Earth. Honor's fleet never got remotely close enough to anything for defensive minefields around critical defenses to come into play; so if they existed (and they probably did - remember they're a routine part of area defenses) they simply weren't mentioned as they didn't affect the story. It's not like we got a complete briefing on all of Sol's defenses; the books only mentioned the parts that were of concern to the characters. Same for forts - Honor's fleet didn't get anywhere near even effective Cataphract range of Sol's fixed defenses so any forts (and there probably were some around Earth and Mars, at the very least) simply aren't worth mentioning as Kingsford would have ordered them to stand down along with the rest of the defenses while Honor was still far, far, outside the range of any weapon they mount. Might as well claim Sol had no ground troops since those weren't mentioned either.

25 years ago Sol was the most heavily defended system in known space, and despite peacetime budgets and manning levels those defenses hasn't been reduced (despite Navies rarely getting the peacetime funding they want to provide all the defense and perform all the roles they need to). The defenses simply had the misfortune to miss out on two utterly war-changing revolutions within 20 years.



Kind of like defenses of the early 1880's designed to stand off ironclads -- say the RN's Ajax class, commissioned 1884, whose heaviest weapon was four 12.5 in muzzle loading rifles, firing an 800 lbs solid shot or black power shells 6,0000 yards (and taking a couple minutes between shots). Image if the defenders has totally missed the the 2 technological revolutions in naval warfare (pre-dreadnoughts and dreadnoughts) that had occurred in the 20-25 years between then and 1906. So, surprise, HMS Dreadnought shows up to assault them -- carrying ten 12 inch breach loading rifles, firing 850 lbs armor piecing or high explosive shells 25,000 yards!
There might be defensive minefields, but if the defenders weren't aware of massive increase in gun ranges they'd be designed around keeping attacking warships from getting within, say, 10,000 yards without risking the mines. HMS Dreadnought can stay safely outside the minefield, and beyond the defender's gun range, and still devastate defensive forts whose designers didn't have any concept of armor piercing high explosive shells. They could send their 25 year old gunboats out (LAC analog), and maybe some carry early torpedoes - but they'd be facing twenty-seven quick-firing 12 pounder (3") secondary guns; which put out a volume of fire (20 rounds/minute/gun) an entire ironclad fleet would be jealous of; the obsolete gunboats would also be shredded.

Kind of like what Apollo let Honor do to Sol's defenses. Her weapons vastly outranged the defenses, so of course they didn't even scratch her fleet's paint. Most of them didn't even try because Kingsford saw it was futile and order them to stand down and avoid throwing lives away pointlessly while Honor was still at multiple times the maximum usable range of any weapon Sol had.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:From the tracks of the missiles, they could get a fairly good guess of direction they came from. Once they correlate that with investigations of sensor "ghosts", they should identify which one was the actual attack run. With the timing, they can deduce the acceleration that the attack ships could achieve. Thus, they will know that what ever drive was used had an acceleration that as a fraction of what an impeller-driven ship could achieve.

As tlb wrote above, unfortunately that doesn't give us much information. The torpedoes began accelerating much earlier than they needed to hit the targets, ostensibly because they needed to manoeuvre into targets with limited acceleration. So they weren't accelerating for the part of the attack run where they were under sensor observation.

Note also we don't know if this was their max accel either. They may not have used all they could because they didn't need to and because they didn't know how much leakage there was to Manticoran sensors. For Oyster Bay, they couldn't risk detection, so they'd likely use a very conservative assumption of what can be detected. For an interception in their home system, there's no such limitation: if the target detects the missile but doesn't escape to tell the tale, it's not a problem.

We don't know what Simões knew about the spider drive, besides its existence. It's likely he knew some broad strokes, such as the acceleration being tied to the surface area and the triangular shape of the hull. With that, you can make an educated guess that the torpedoes can't accelerate a lot, but you can't infer what that acceleration is. It can be anywhere from 10 to 10000 gravities. They can probably conclude, though, that it's less than that of a conventional missile, which means a scout can expect to be intercepted by Cataphract-Cs burning really hot at over 130,000 gravities.

And anything less than a shoalful of missiles is going to be swatted aside by the scout anyway. The scout is not smaller than a CL and is likely to be a full CA.