Attacking Darius:

Do pardon. Two posts transplanted together.

tlb wrote:We know that the palace defenses were shooting and destroyed two pieces that the tugs did not get; so nothing hit the City of Landing.

kzt wrote:Gamma rays are pretty terrible at penetrating the atmosphere. But lots of energy in a graser. So don’t know. But ballistic targets are pretty easy to track, and it you keep the spot on the target no problem. Heck, you could use CMs.

But it’s my belief that David forgot about the forts. Because they were never brought up, and the gut on the bridge of a fort is a really good viewpoint character.

Palace defenses are made up of energy weapons only, which would be targeting through the atmosphere. I always wondered how that would work with the atmosphere attenuating the energy fire. Plus, I would hate to be a bird or an air breather in the area breathing supercharged particles. It should be like flying into someone's jetwash. Oops.

It may also be damaging to the ozone layer.

I simply question the accuracy of targeting pieces of wreckage as opposed to an intact ship, but I suppose your - I forgot the term that David uses - resolution, accuracy, gets better with time since the debris is headed towards you. So the limitations of light speed weapons diminishes with time. (Not so for the long range targeting of a fort.) But I still see the need for Palace defenses to go to continuous rapid fire; to not just hit, but sufficiently destroy the debris. But then, I suppose, too, that planetary defenses would count on the atmosphere to burn up smaller pieces of debris. Smaller pieces that it caused.

cthia wrote:Palace defenses are made up of energy weapons only, which would be targeting through the atmosphere. I always wondered how that would work with the atmosphere attenuating the energy fire. Plus, I would hate to be a bird or an air breather in the area breathing supercharged particles. It should be like flying into someone's jetwash. Oops.

It may also be damaging to the ozone layer.

Those are valid concerns; however the impact of two pieces of wreckage on the city might have effects that are worse (even to the ozone layer).

It is POSSIBLE that the Alignment believes that the location of Darius (which is a very closely guarded secret) behind a wormhole bridge effectively is the primary defense. Nobody (well, except SLN admirals who can't close their boots with two hands) is likely to try and force a defended wormhole bridge as part of an attack.

As long as nobody gets the navigations coordinates of the Darius system, it's a great hiding place. That is amplified by the existence of at least three other wormholes that it connects with- Torch and the two "not identified". That would provide ratholes for the Alignment to dive down if they have even a minimum amount of notice. They also provide the MAN with three ways to move information and ships to do other stuff. You have to consider that if/when Zilwicki and company work their way to Felix, they should notice that the Manheim SDF is "sort of" investing the place including an interesting spot outside the hyper limit. That should just scream "wormhole"

It is also possible (but highly unlikely) that the Alignment has not been building impeller hyperspace warships since they settled Darius as they expect to only need Spider Drive ships as assassins to amplify and later enforce the eventual rule. That would have been betting everything on 1) the spiders work at least as well as anticipated (and we don't really know what the actual plans are) and 2) the Alignment was going to have it's targets disarmed by killing each others warships and destroying a lot ability to fight or defend.
So, the RF is/was initialy 12 systems, some of which had SDFs and then whatever was captured/co-opted in the rise of the RF in some melange of warships of various ages and designes? Creep an LD to just outside a system's hyper limit and blow the crap out of anything that can't move including warships attached to stations in OB like strikes? Then kill anything that arrives to proved aid to said systems the same way once the ship(s) go into orbit? Such a nice bunch of "supermen" Where is the Alignment creating and holding that massive number of occupation forces to administer and maintain "order" on the planets absorbed into the Alignment philosophy? You know, the Alpha and Beta "governors" and the true believer "security forces" for hundreds -or thousands - of industrialized systems across the "normal human" settled galaxy?
The logistics of that would be interesting.
Just wondering.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Palace defenses are made up of energy weapons only, which would be targeting through the atmosphere. I always wondered how that would work with the atmosphere attenuating the energy fire. Plus, I would hate to be a bird or an air breather in the area breathing supercharged particles. It should be like flying into someone's jetwash. Oops.

It may also be damaging to the ozone layer.

Those are valid concerns; however the impact of two pieces of wreckage on the city might have effects that are worse (even to the ozone layer).

Absolutely. The lesser of two evils?

Anywho, I was simply mentioning those things in passing. My apology for being too lazy to place them into an aside, like I mentally toyed with. But I am always getting caught editing and splicing genes.

Brigade XO wrote:It is POSSIBLE that the Alignment believes that the location of Darius (which is a very closely guarded secret) behind a wormhole bridge effectively is the primary defense. Nobody (well, except SLN admirals who can't close their boots with two hands) is likely to try and force a defended wormhole bridge as part of an attack.

That could indeed be true. The possibility that they are counting on the impossibility of finding or simply stumbling over the location of Darius to suffice as the defense, is real. But personally I don't think they would count on luck as a defense, or trust Murphy not to reveal the location no more than the Peeps would have regarding Bolthole.

But if they did rely on being completely hidden so well that you can look right at it and miss it, then it truly piques my curiosity about what is so special about its location.

Brigade XO wrote:As long as nobody gets the navigations coordinates of the Darius system, it's a great hiding place. That is amplified by the existence of at least three other wormholes that it connects with- Torch and the two "not identified". That would provide ratholes for the Alignment to dive down if they have even a minimum amount of notice. They also provide the MAN with three ways to move information and ships to do other stuff. You have to consider that if/when Zilwicki and company work their way to Felix, they should notice that the Manheim SDF is "sort of" investing the place including an interesting spot outside the hyper limit. That should just scream "wormhole"

Which mirrors one of my posts. The MAlign has displayed its affinity for fall back positions. They fled Mesa. Galton was a misdirection. Darius is a planet of slaves. Where do the MA actually live?

Brigade XO wrote:It is also possible (but highly unlikely) that the Alignment has not been building impeller hyperspace warships since they settled Darius as they expect to only need Spider Drive ships as assassins to amplify and later enforce the eventual rule. That would have been betting everything on 1) the spiders work at least as well as anticipated (and we don't really know what the actual plans are) and 2) the Alignment was going to have it's targets disarmed by killing each others warships and destroying a lot ability to fight or defend.
So, the RF is/was initialy 12 systems, some of which had SDFs and then whatever was captured/co-opted in the rise of the RF in some melange of warships of various ages and designes? Creep an LD to just outside a system's hyper limit and blow the crap out of anything that can't move including warships attached to stations in OB like strikes? Then kill anything that arrives to proved aid to said systems the same way once the ship(s) go into orbit? Such a nice bunch of "supermen" Where is the Alignment creating and holding that massive number of occupation forces to administer and maintain "order" on the planets absorbed into the Alignment philosophy? You know, the Alpha and Beta "governors" and the true believer "security forces" for hundreds -or thousands - of industrialized systems across the "normal human" settled galaxy?
The logistics of that would be interesting.
Just wondering.

That is what I said too, as a response to the charge that Darius can't possibly equal the industrial capacity of the GA. The GA were building so many different types of ships and hardware. The MAlign may have been arachnophobic and superstitious, relying solely on Spiders and Ghosts.

cthia wrote:Palace defenses are made up of energy weapons only, which would be targeting through the atmosphere. I always wondered how that would work with the atmosphere attenuating the energy fire. Plus, I would hate to be a bird or an air breather in the area breathing supercharged particles. It should be like flying into someone's jetwash. Oops.

I wonder how flexible the Honorverse's tractor and pressor units are. Could you use them to shove the air aside and create a couple meter wide column of (near) vacuum to fire the lasers or grasers up through?

You'd still get some issues from shoving that much air around that quickly - but they might be less than dumping all that thermal bloom into the atmosphere -- plus it makes the weapons more effective.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Palace defenses are made up of energy weapons only, which would be targeting through the atmosphere. I always wondered how that would work with the atmosphere attenuating the energy fire. Plus, I would hate to be a bird or an air breather in the area breathing supercharged particles. It should be like flying into someone's jetwash. Oops.

I wonder how flexible the Honorverse's tractor and pressor units are. Could you use them to shove the air aside and create a couple meter wide column of (near) vacuum to fire the lasers or grasers up through?

You'd still get some issues from shoving that much air around that quickly - but they might be less than dumping all that thermal bloom into the atmosphere -- plus it makes the weapons more effective.

Interesting! And it would be brilliant if it worked, and worked without creating the conditions for a tornado. But I would assume the diameter of the presser beam would have to be dozens of meters for it to be effective. Also, it seems like the intense vacuum would simply suck atmosphere back inside very quickly, destabilizing the graser. It would be like bumping into a sniper with an instantaneous Cat 5 hurricane as he shoots.

It appears that the effect of pumping lots of gamma rays is that the gamma rays turn the air into plasma and if you apply enough energy if will bleach it and get to the surface intact.

However, even if the beam doesn't reach the surface as a graser, it won't be healthy to be under the beam. A de-focused graser is going to be spraying some radius around the aimpoint with high-intensity gamma rays. So maybe no hole in the ground, but everything drops dead.

cthia wrote:But if they did rely on being completely hidden so well that you can look right at it and miss it, then it truly piques my curiosity about what is so special about its location.

It probably isn't. It's probably located in a very unpopulated part of the Galaxy, like the Matapan terminus of the MWHJ, so the chance of an exploring survey ship stumbling onto them is minimal.

Which mirrors one of my posts. The MAlign has displayed its affinity for fall back positions. They fled Mesa. Galton was a misdirection. Darius is a planet of slaves. Where do the MA actually live?

This can't go ad infinitum. They have to live somewhere.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:This can't go ad infinitum. They have to live somewhere.

It's turtles all the way down.