WAR ROOM

A two part question. Pardon if either's a stale question...

1. Even if the GA stumbles upon the Felix Wormhole Junction, would they immediately be able to transit it, never having ever used it? Without an observation ship for weeks? Certainly the MA's junction personnel will be conditioned to self-destruct before cooperating.

2. Let's assume the (FWJ) has the same tonnage restrictions as at least the MWJ. What force mix would you send through, knowing that the junction will be shut down for a time?

cthia wrote:A two part question. Pardon if either's a stale question...

1. Even if the GA stumbles upon the Felix Wormhole Junction, would they immediately be able to transit it, never having ever used it? Without an observation ship for weeks? Certainly the MA's junction personnel will be conditioned to self-destruct before cooperating.

2. Let's assume the (FWJ) has the same tonnage restrictions as at least the MWJ. What force mix would you send through, knowing that the junction will be shut down for a time?

1) no they couldn't, it would more likely take months if they don't have any navigational data or guides available.

2) It most likely does not have the same ceiling. I believe the Manticorian junction has the largest ceiling. However, given you don't have nav data, either you send a scout to get more data, and a return vector, or anything you send will be stranded. And any single scout will be destroyed by any defense.

If Felix is as strong as the Manticorian junction, then it also has the 8 minute long emergence gate. Against a full, modern pod/laserhead defense, even 29 Gryphon SDs would be hard pressed to survive to prosecute the attack. Pod based SDs are less durable and would be even more vulnerable to attack than tube SDs, especially since wedges and sidewalls would be down and no missiles could be fired.

If there were only 8 Solly designed BCs there, as covered the Torch wormhole, the SDs would survive.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:A two part question. Pardon if either's a stale question...

1. Even if the GA stumbles upon the Felix Wormhole Junction, would they immediately be able to transit it, never having ever used it? Without an observation ship for weeks? Certainly the MA's junction personnel will be conditioned to self-destruct before cooperating.

2. Let's assume the (FWJ) has the same tonnage restrictions as at least the MWJ. What force mix would you send through, knowing that the junction will be shut down for a time?

1) no they couldn't, it would more likely take months if they don't have any navigational data or guides available.

2) It most likely does not have the same ceiling. I believe the Manticorian junction has the largest ceiling. However, given you don't have nav data, either you send a scout to get more data, and a return vector, or anything you send will be stranded. And any single scout will be destroyed by any defense.

If Felix is as strong as the Manticorian junction, then it also has the 8 minute long emergence gate. Against a full, modern pod/laserhead defense, even 29 Gryphon SDs would be hard pressed to survive to prosecute the attack. Pod based SDs are less durable and would be even more vulnerable to attack than tube SDs, especially since wedges and sidewalls would be down and no missiles could be fired.

If there were only 8 Solly designed BCs there, as covered the Torch wormhole, the SDs would survive.

One more thought on #2. Years ago it was posted that if someone attempted simultaneous translation of the ceiling mass worth of FF/DD/CLs, a significant number of ships would probably survive to enter hyper and report the location of the far terminus. Given that we are talking about ~550 Frigates or ~250 CLs (or any mixture in between), by sheer statistics, at least a dozen should survive to get to hyper. However, we are discussing the loss of a major navy's worth of escorts in the process, with 120-450 sailors per ship, or 60-120,000 sailors lost in the process. Given an average of 4500 sailors per RMN SD, 29 SDs would hazard over 120,000 sailors, or about the same.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:A two part question. Pardon if either's a stale question...

1. Even if the GA stumbles upon the Felix Wormhole Junction, would they immediately be able to transit it, never having ever used it? Without an observation ship for weeks? Certainly the MA's junction personnel will be conditioned to self-destruct before cooperating.

2. Let's assume the (FWJ) has the same tonnage restrictions as at least the MWJ. What force mix would you send through, knowing that the junction will be shut down for a time?

1) no they couldn't, it would more likely take months if they don't have any navigational data or guides available.

2) It most likely does not have the same ceiling. I believe the Manticorian junction has the largest ceiling. However, given you don't have nav data, either you send a scout to get more data, and a return vector, or anything you send will be stranded. And any single scout will be destroyed by any defense.

If Felix is as strong as the Manticorian junction, then it also has the 8 minute long emergence gate. Against a full, modern pod/laserhead defense, even 29 Gryphon SDs would be hard pressed to survive to prosecute the attack. Pod based SDs are less durable and would be even more vulnerable to attack than tube SDs, especially since wedges and sidewalls would be down and no missiles could be fired.

If there were only 8 Solly designed BCs there, as covered the Torch wormhole, the SDs would survive.

Theemile wrote:One more thought on #2. Years ago it was posted that if someone attempted simultaneous translation of the ceiling mass worth of FF/DD/CLs, a significant number of ships would probably survive to enter hyper and report the location of the far terminus. Given that we are talking about ~550 Frigates or ~250 CLs (or any mixture in between), by sheer statistics, at least a dozen should survive to get to hyper. However, we are discussing the loss of a major navy's worth of escorts in the process, with 120-450 sailors per ship, or 60-120,000 sailors lost in the process. Given an average of 4500 sailors per RMN SD, 29 SDs would hazard over 120,000 sailors, or about the same.

Why do I feel like the tentative student in class reluctant to raise his hand? What purpose would knowing the location of the far terminus serve?


Regarding finding the FWJ. Surely this exact same question will be parroted in the War Room. Or, if the best way to assault a junction has already been discussed, I'd appreciate a link to the thread...

"What are our options, ladies and gentlemen? We have — for the sake of national security — let's say, stumbled onto the location of this terminus. We know the difficulties of assaulting a defended WHJ. Has our own control over a wormhole network not taught us any tricks?

Does our pledge to the 'Cats and our own people end here?"

#$$ #&$$#%

...

I WANT SOME BUTTS!

https://youtu.be/AS9j_-mqSWc

cthia wrote:Why do I feel like the tentative student in class reluctant to raise his hand? What purpose would knowing the location of the far terminus serve?


Regarding finding the FWJ. Surely this exact same question will be parroted in the War Room. Or, if the best way to assault a junction has already been discussed, I'd appreciate a link to the thread...

"What are our options, ladies and gentlemen? We have — for the sake of national security — let's say, stumbled onto the location of this terminus. We know the difficulties of assaulting a defended WHJ. Has our own control over a wormhole network not taught us any tricks?

I don't think Manticore or the GA are going to try and shotgun a horde of little ships down the Torch wormhole to find it's other end.

However if you did find the real astrographical location of the far terminus then you can send an assault fleet through hyper to seize it. Since they don't transit the wormhole they aren't subject to the insane defensive penalties an attack through a wormhole suffers. So no more risky than sending that same force to capture a planet. Given the GA's massive edge in missile combat it should be straightforward and reasonably low risk to capture a terminus if you get to the system through hyper. (Though the defenders have a better chance to cut and run since they're well outside the hyper limit)


Now we as readers know that even if they did this that would only get them as far as the Twins.
They'd have to repeat the semi-suicidal scouting run of the next wormhole leg to lead them to the Felix junction, and yet again 3 more times to be sure of finding the real astrographical location of the system containing Darius.
(Actually, I'm not sure if we got confirmation that Darius has the terminus; it might just be a system reasonably nearby to the system with the terminus. Kind of like the Lynx terminus isn't in the Lynx system, that's simply the closest inhabited system to the lifeless system the terminus actually connects to)

So to reiterate, the proposed method of finding the location of the terminus isn't useful. But actually knowing the astrographical location of a terminus can be very useful.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Why do I feel like the tentative student in class reluctant to raise his hand? What purpose would knowing the location of the far terminus serve?


Regarding finding the FWJ. Surely this exact same question will be parroted in the War Room. Or, if the best way to assault a junction has already been discussed, I'd appreciate a link to the thread...

"What are our options, ladies and gentlemen? We have — for the sake of national security — let's say, stumbled onto the location of this terminus. We know the difficulties of assaulting a defended WHJ. Has our own control over a wormhole network not taught us any tricks?

I don't think Manticore or the GA are going to try and shotgun a horde of little ships down the Torch wormhole to find it's other end.

However if you did find the real astrographical location of the far terminus then you can send an assault fleet through hyper to seize it. Since they don't transit the wormhole they aren't subject to the insane defensive penalties an attack through a wormhole suffers. So no more risky than sending that same force to capture a planet. Given the GA's massive edge in missile combat it should be straightforward and reasonably low risk to capture a terminus if you get to the system through hyper. (Though the defenders have a better chance to cut and run since they're well outside the hyper limit)


Now we as readers know that even if they did this that would only get them as far as the Twins.
They'd have to repeat the semi-suicidal scouting run of the next wormhole leg to lead them to the Felix junction, and yet again 3 more times to be sure of finding the real astrographical location of the system containing Darius.
(Actually, I'm not sure if we got confirmation that Darius has the terminus; it might just be a system reasonably nearby to the system with the terminus. Kind of like the Lynx terminus isn't in the Lynx system, that's simply the closest inhabited system to the lifeless system the terminus actually connects to)

So to reiterate, the proposed method of finding the location of the terminus isn't useful. But actually knowing the astrographical location of a terminus can be very useful.

Yeah, please note, I do not advocate either method I mentioned, merely that they were the possible options discussed previously. There have been many threads (especially about Torch) concerning modern wormhole assaults, with David adding in missing information we did not have before- specifically the multi-minute emergence corridor, where the transiting ship is in a grav wave, and unable to use wedges, sidewalls and gravity based weapons. The other important drop from David was that the radius of the emergence corridor is less than the stand-off distance of a laserhead.

So against a modern pod/laserhead defense, any emerging force is completely vulnerable to the defense, which if sited properly, can not only shoot at the non-sidewall protected armor belt, but also the unarmed dorsal and ventral aspects of ships. And since the defense can use missiles, and the invader cannot, a modern defense can sit at a comfortable distance and shoot at the invader with no danger of being damaged back while the invader is in the emergence lane.

So, if you build your defense properly, NO wormhole assault can survive it in 1920. Your only hope is to literally wear them down with bloodt successive suicide assaults until you run them out of missiles or, by stastics, ships survive long enough to clear the lane and directly engage the defenses and damage their firecontrol. However, stastical odds, and mass, repeated suicide waves are untenable in the Honorverse. A hyper assault is the best option.

While typing this, I realized something I haven't seen addressed before. All energy weapons have grav lenses in the sidewalls to focus the energy wespons. If the sidewalls are down, due to being in the grav wave in the emergence lane, how can the energy weapons fire?. Even if the lenses are separate, shouldn't the grav lane energy keep the grav lenses from forming? If so, why was there ever a threat from a wormhole assault, as long as sufficient mines and grass platforms existed to destroy the attackers in the emergence lane?

Theemile wrote:Yeah, please note, I do not advocate either method I mentioned, merely that they were the possible options discussed previously. There have been many threads (especially about Torch) concerning modern wormhole assaults, with David adding in missing information we did not have before- specifically the multi-minute emergence corridor, where the transiting ship is in a grav wave, and unable to use wedges, sidewalls and gravity based weapons. The other important drop from David was that the radius of the emergence corridor is less than the stand-off distance of a laserhead.

So against a modern pod/laserhead defense, any emerging force is completely vulnerable to the defense, which if sited properly, can not only shoot at the non-sidewall protected armor belt, but also the unarmed dorsal and ventral aspects of ships. And since the defense can use missiles, and the invader cannot, a modern defense can sit at a comfortable distance and shoot at the invader with no danger of being damaged back while the invader is in the emergence lane.

So, if you build your defense properly, NO wormhole assault can survive it in 1920. Your only hope is to literally wear them down with bloodt successive suicide assaults until you run them out of missiles or, by stastics, ships survive long enough to clear the lane and directly engage the defenses and damage their firecontrol. However, stastical odds, and mass, repeated suicide waves are untenable in the Honorverse. A hyper assault is the best option.

While typing this, I realized something I haven't seen addressed before. All energy weapons have grav lenses in the sidewalls to focus the energy wespons. If the sidewalls are down, due to being in the grav wave in the emergence lane, how can the energy weapons fire?. Even if the lenses are separate, shouldn't the grav lane energy keep the grav lenses from forming? If so, why was there ever a threat from a wormhole assault, as long as sufficient mines and grass platforms existed to destroy the attackers in the emergence lane?

Apparently, the grav lenses of the energy weapons are not affected by being in a a grav wave. Otherwise, CPT Helen Zilwicki's convoy escort would not have been engaged by the PRN forces in the gravity wave in The Short Victorious War. Instead, they would have engaged while the convoy was between gravity waves similar to what happened to the convoy in the Selker Rift in Honor Among Enemies.

Vince wrote:

Theemile wrote:While typing this, I realized something I haven't seen addressed before. All energy weapons have grav lenses in the sidewalls to focus the energy wespons. If the sidewalls are down, due to being in the grav wave in the emergence lane, how can the energy weapons fire?. Even if the lenses are separate, shouldn't the grav lane energy keep the grav lenses from forming? If so, why was there ever a threat from a wormhole assault, as long as sufficient mines and grass platforms existed to destroy the attackers in the emergence lane?

Apparently, the grav lenses of the energy weapons are not affected by being in a a grav wave. Otherwise, CPT Helen Zilwicki's convoy escort would not have been engaged by the PRN forces in the gravity wave in The Short Victorious War. Instead, they would have engaged while the convoy was between gravity waves similar to what happened to the convoy in the Selker Rift in Honor Among Enemies.

Yep, they must somehow adjust to avoid the destructive interference with and grav turbulence in the wave. We know that's not impossible because you can build a bubble sidewall to do the same thing (it just isn't worth the size/cost given the vanishingly rare occurrence mid-'wave combat)

Also I'd note that while the grav lenses do slot into the sidewall, the sidewall was clearly not a prerequisite because ships mounted chaser energy mounts long before bow/stern walls were deployed.


However there was another reason that pre-laserhead wormhole assaults should have been very low threat. We know the range energy weapons can burn through a sidewall is far less than the range energy weapons are effective against bare armor. IIRC the burnthrough range against the sidewall of a equal class ship is roughly 400,000 km, but against bare armor its more like 1,000,000 km. So if you site your defending forts, or ships out at around 750,000 km and keep their sidewalls up you're effectively immune to return fire but still landing devastating laser and graser hits against ship's creeping down the emergency lane with no sidewalls to protect them.

Now due to angularity issues you may 'only' be able to smash up their nearer hammerhead until you do enough damage to drop a sail - those do stick out far enough you've got to be pretty close to 90 degrees to their broadside to hit the midships area - and unlike a laserhead you can't rapidly move to where you've got a clean shot. But even with that restriction you're smashing them up from beyond their effective weapons range.

Theemile wrote:Yeah, please note, I do not advocate either method I mentioned, merely that they were the possible options discussed previously. There have been many threads (especially about Torch) concerning modern wormhole assaults, with David adding in missing information we did not have before- specifically the multi-minute emergence corridor, where the transiting ship is in a grav wave, and unable to use wedges, sidewalls and gravity based weapons. The other important drop from David was that the radius of the emergence corridor is less than the stand-off distance of a laserhead.

Are you sure that's specifically gravity based weapons? Only asking because I thought it was anything which physically separated from the transiting ship and left its compensator field(or maybe hyper generator field?). Lifepods, missiles, drones, pinnaces etc.

munroburton wrote:

Theemile wrote:Yeah, please note, I do not advocate either method I mentioned, merely that they were the possible options discussed previously. There have been many threads (especially about Torch) concerning modern wormhole assaults, with David adding in missing information we did not have before- specifically the multi-minute emergence corridor, where the transiting ship is in a grav wave, and unable to use wedges, sidewalls and gravity based weapons. The other important drop from David was that the radius of the emergence corridor is less than the stand-off distance of a laserhead.

Are you sure that's specifically gravity based weapons? Only asking because I thought it was anything which physically separated from the transiting ship and left its compensator field(or maybe hyper generator field?). Lifepods, missiles, drones, pinnaces etc.

Unprotected items can survive in a grav wave, but can be destroyed by grav sheer and turbulance. That's why you can tow a ship with a destroyed sail free of the wave. Impellers will be instantly destroyed in a grav wave.