Return Of The Frigate

George J. Smith wrote:Building a frigate with a spider drive does not make sense, the currently known (to the reader) disadvantage of the spider drive is its low speed. If somehow it is detected and tracked it would have no chance of getting away from its pursuers. The same applies to any spider drive equipped vessel, if detected and tracked it just can't shake off its pursuers.

Which makes my suggestion of a cruisersized streakdrive ship much more suitable as a "frigate"(for the time between streakdrive being possible, and being possible to put in all ships(which might never even happen)).

Tenshinai wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:Building a frigate with a spider drive does not make sense, the currently known (to the reader) disadvantage of the spider drive is its low speed. If somehow it is detected and tracked it would have no chance of getting away from its pursuers. The same applies to any spider drive equipped vessel, if detected and tracked it just can't shake off its pursuers.

Which makes my suggestion of a cruisersized streakdrive ship much more suitable as a "frigate"(for the time between streakdrive being possible, and being possible to put in all ships(which might never even happen)).

Right. Everybody is equipped with spider drives so that only way to detect them is up close and personal, and then you attack them with the grav lance. Makes perfect sense now.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:Which makes my suggestion of a cruisersized streakdrive ship much more suitable as a "frigate"(for the time between streakdrive being possible, and being possible to put in all ships(which might never even happen)).

Right. Everybody is equipped with spider drives so that only way to detect them is up close and personal, and then you attack them with the grav lance. Makes perfect sense now.

No sidewalls - no use for the grav lance. The energy torpedo alone will settle this glorious day!!

Depending on how detection and tech proliferation goes, there may be that role for counterparts of the Ghost FF. There will certainly be plenty of impeller drive, streak drive ships about. I'd not be surprised if all future hyper-capable warships accept larger hypergenerators in order to get 40% higher interstellar speed - ask me for anything but time, and assuming you're going the right direction in a timely manner, you get time out of speed. I could see some argument for accepting a slower strategic speed out of wallers in order to maintain all the mass and volume for sheer fighting power, but on the other hand, wallers can afford the larger hypergenerators better than anything else. (And when a streak dispatch boat can be outwardly indistinguishable from a standard one, and dispatch boats already go without any amenities, the hypergenerator can't be that much of a volume-consumer.)

So there may not be a reason for 'frigate' to have to fight between landing on a small, harmless stealth observer and a larger faster-in-hyper unit, if the latter isn't exceptional for being faster in hyper. For that matter, there's reason to suppose 'frigate' may, sadly, not land on anything, just because it makes RFC itch and it's still being used in-universe for things exactly like what it traditionally has been used for there.

JeffEngel wrote:No sidewalls - no use for the grav lance. The energy torpedo alone will settle this glorious day!!
<snip>

Spider ships MAY be equipped with a bubble sidewall - which cannot be used in conjunction with the spider drive (so choose, protection or mobility).

Now, will the Grav lance work on a "bubble" sidewall, that's a whole 'nother question - and ... grrrr... don't know. Normal sidewalls are archored to the wedge and the gravelance destabilizes the sidewall away from the anchorings.
Since a bubble sidewall doesn't anchor to anything, will a GL destabize a bubble sidewall?... Don't know.....

JeffEngel wrote:No sidewalls - no use for the grav lance. The energy torpedo alone will settle this glorious day!!
<snip>

Theemile wrote:

Spider ships MAY be equipped with a bubble sidewall - which cannot be used in conjunction with the spider drive (so choose, protection or mobility).

Now, will the Grav lance work on a "bubble" sidewall, that's a whole 'nother question - and ... grrrr... don't know. Normal sidewalls are archored to the wedge and the gravelance destabilizes the sidewall away from the anchorings.
Since a bubble sidewall doesn't anchor to anything, will a GL destabize a bubble sidewall?... Don't know.....

Interesting question. I had assumed that the grav lance would work against the bubble sidewall, but you are correct, there is no textev that that is the case. Where was the textev that the bubble sidewall would not work with the spider drive? I don't recall that restriction on it.

Theemile wrote:Now, will the Grav lance work on a "bubble" sidewall, ...

Probably not.

If the target is armed, the TWTSNBN won't survive to get in range more than about one time in a thousand.

If the Target isn't armed, TWTSNBN isn't needed because the target will have no choice but to surrender when discovered.

In the one in a thousand instance, TWTSNBN would burn out the bubble sidewall if more conventional energy weapons or missiles left any sidewalls to attack.

Yeah, as you cruise in to use your grav lance they are aiming a 4 meter graser at you. I would bet on the graser getting to effective range first....

fallsfromtrees wrote:Where was the textev that the bubble sidewall would not work with the spider drive? I don't recall that restriction on it.

No textev, but we do have "Word of Weber" that a spider drive can not operate through a bubble. It is not in the Pearls, but I do remember it.

JeffEngel wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:The GA is, for the moment, not interested in the role of peace keeper for the former SL or anywhere else. The major members – Haven and Manticore- want peace within their boarders, on the trade routes their shipping is going to use, and convincing others to not grow to the point where they will become a threat to the GA members (and treaty partners such as IAM, etc.)

They're not in a position to maintain peace inside the Solarian League yet; the SLN is still around and the member worlds are still parts of the League. But if you don't want to wait for trouble to come over your borders, and if you want to be able to maintain trade peacefully in the 80% of the human civilization that has been under the League, you're going to end up taking as much of a peacekeeping role as you can. The entire Solarian League is about to be old Silesia. The RMN and IAN assumed a large portion of the peacekeeping role there just because chaos is bad for business and the Silesians couldn't do it themselves. The same will apply here on a far larger scale, and the GA is committed to keeping the former League from coming back as a single, aggressive state. Letting warlords be til one of them came out on top would be exactly the wrong move and they know it.

I don't know that the former League territory is going to be that bad - not in the core, and probably not in the shell. (I admit that the protectorates may be a different matter).

Nothing we've seen shows the individual system governments are especially corrupt. Piracy needs more than simply light system defenses to succeed. It also needs support from some government or market in order to get recruits, refit and rearm ships, and fence the stolen cargo and ships. I don't see the core (or even most of the shell) planets jumping into bed with the pirates -- which makes it hard for them to turn a profit.

Piracy, even in poorly defended Silesia, wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad if there hadn't been many system governors working with and protecting the pirates.


And even old style LACs can be pretty effective in harassing pirates enough to drive them away. So even those SDFs with nothing more than a LAC (who would be pretty vulnerable to raids or warlord-ism) can discourage most pirates.

crewdude48 wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:Where was the textev that the bubble sidewall would not work with the spider drive? I don't recall that restriction on it.

No textev, but we do have "Word of Weber" that a spider drive can not operate through a bubble. It is not in the Pearls, but I do remember it.

But the same infodump does state that the installations are not incompatable - just their operations are incompatable. (don't remember wich precludes the use of the other, but they won't work together.)

Hence we've been saying if a Spider SD ever loses stealth, it better be darned tough - it can't outrun it's pursuerers and once the bubble is up everyone will know exactly where it is at. The only options a Spider SD has are Stealth or a fight to the death.