What is the |value| of captured enemy systems?

cthia wrote:

Joat42 wrote:I don't see a problem for coordinating an attack down to the second.

The TF's transits to their respective staging areas in advance, take stellar readings, compensate for distance between the different areas and calculate the time down to microseconds.

Absolutely Impossible.

cthia wrote:There are just too many opportunities for error to be introduced into any calculations, then comes error introduced by the conversion. And this is all dependent on a particular system's track of time to be dependable to your needs. Heck, Grayson's stubbornness to maintain Old Earth's A.D. Anno Domini is the type of problems you can expect. Then there's the error introduced by a second being added back in on Sol time, the actual revolution of Earth, yatta yatta yatta.

Consider this site and all of the potential pitfalls that can conspire to make you unfashionably late for the party. . .

What Is International Atomic Time (TAI)?

Joat42 wrote:I think you don't really grasp how you go about synchronizing clocks on a galactic scale. You don't care about what a particular systems track of time is - you just choose one to use as the common time reference. Then measure a couple of pulsars, they have a known decay rate measured in milli- and nanoseconds per day and that means you can compare their spinrates and pulse dispersion to get an accurate time comparable to an atomic clock - plus you get an accurate spatial position.

If you don't believe me, you can read about the basics in Binary and Millisecond Pulsars by Duncan R. Lorimer.

cthia wrote:Oh, I do. I'm just also aware of that annoying little concept I've been trying to introduce into the forum since I've been a member, to no avail. The human element.

Now we want to mix it with the problems associated with synchronizing clocks with manmade instruments across the galaxy? Pfft.

cthia wrote:Now, the human element tells me that a warship will want to be synchronized with the time down on planet, keeping appointments and the like. I'd also imagine that most systems have an internal pulse signal sent out in system that ships can use to synchronize clocks. But if any one of you really think clocks are synchronized in all parts of the galaxy, then I have to warn you. . .

cthia wrote:All orders are final and nonrefundable on that swampland.

cthia wrote:I know it will be easy to do in the MBS, what I meant is that I'm surprised if it is done. I wouldn't expect it to be off by much, but minutes wouldn't surprise me.

cthia wrote:Pulsars aren't the problem. Man's instruments are.

Dauntless wrote:in theory if you capture a haven ship yard it can be used to help repair haven captured equipment

but given that most haven ships were only about 70% as good as a manty ship of the same class then why would want to put more of the less capable equipment on those captured ships?

no doubt there were probably some compatibility issues when getting haven and manty equipment to talk to each other but from what little we know about it, the only real info we have is from flag in exile, the issues were not insurmountable.

Joat t2 wrote:Did you know that our Man-made GPS-satellites had a maximum drift of 10ns during the period 2005 to 2015, and if you added the UTC offset data it was 2ns. Man's instruments are so very bad... I wonder how bad they will become after 2000 years of refinement...

cthia wrote:

Joat t2 wrote:Did you know that our Man-made GPS-satellites had a maximum drift of 10ns during the period 2005 to 2015, and if you added the UTC offset data it was 2ns. Man's instruments are so very bad... I wonder how bad they will become after 2000 years of refinement...

What does that have to do with the price of tea . . . in China? An altogether different set of problems. Holding station locally is one thing. Claiming to be able to set a clock to measure time inside 10 minutes across the galaxy is preposterous. IMO. You're entitled to your own.

cthia wrote:It's a cold slap in the face to lose a base to the enemy, but even colder to have to destroy your own with your own missiles. I understand the alternative is even worse, but can't believe bases aren't pre-built with this in mind.

cthia wrote:I see. What got me to thinking is The Fly's current thread (nice btw). I certainly need a reread of that book and was looking another reread.

Anyway, I remember Grendelsbane was scuttled. I understand destroying ships to prevent tech from falling into enemy hands, but why were the shipyards destroyed and simply not the manuals, tech, tools and dies?

The only thing I can think of is the limiting factor of time. I can't believe bases aren't built with the ability to eject all equipment together and possibly efficiently detonated as one so the shipyards can be kept intact, forcing the enemy to use its very expensive missiles to lay waste, saving your own. And if the enemy fails to destroy the base perhaps it can be retaken.

It's a cold slap in the face to lose a base to the enemy, but even colder to have to destroy your own with your own missiles. I understand the alternative is even worse, but can't believe bases aren't pre-built with this in mind.

Because if a Manty relief force/cavalry had just so happened to come across the wall at the moment of detonation would have been a shame.

Joat42 wrote:I thought the Manticore system had an FTL-communication network? Then you can use the NTP-protocol to synchronize clocks. The protocol takes into account lag and round-trip times to keep clocks synchronized fairly accurately in the sub-second range. It also handles multiple source-clocks (stratum 0 in NTP-speak).

cthia wrote:Pardon me bold to call attention.

Why should that even be a problem? Isn't position and time related? A ly is a measure of distance, not time. You mean there's a problem getting an accurate enough fix on position in hyper as well? Which puts a finger on the limitations of man's instruments on the expanding expanse of the galaxy. All near anomalies, pitfalls and protocols.

cthia wrote:

Joat t2 wrote:Did you know that our Man-made GPS-satellites had a maximum drift of 10ns during the period 2005 to 2015, and if you added the UTC offset data it was 2ns. Man's instruments are so very bad... I wonder how bad they will become after 2000 years of refinement...

What does that have to do with the price of tea . . . in China? An altogether different set of problems. Holding station locally is one thing. Claiming to be able to set a clock to measure time inside 10 minutes across the galaxy is preposterous. IMO. You're entitled to your own.

Joat42 wrote:Why would it be preposterous? You haven't refuted what I suggested , you just said it doesn't work without saying why.

Triangulate your position and use the measured spin from half a dozen pulsars to calculate a very accurate time.

Didn't the article I linked to explain that using pulsars you can get the same time keeping accuracy as an atomic clock?

cthia wrote:

Dauntless wrote:in theory if you capture a haven ship yard it can be used to help repair haven captured equipment

but given that most haven ships were only about 70% as good as a manty ship of the same class then why would want to put more of the less capable equipment on those captured ships?

no doubt there were probably some compatibility issues when getting haven and manty equipment to talk to each other but from what little we know about it, the only real info we have is from flag in exile, the issues were not insurmountable.

I see. What got me to thinking is The Fly's current thread (nice btw). I certainly need a reread of that book and was looking another reread.

Anyway, I remember Grendelsbane was scuttled. I understand destroying ships to prevent tech from falling into enemy hands, but why were the shipyards destroyed and simply not the manuals, tech, tools and dies?

The only thing I can think of is the limiting factor of time. I can't believe bases aren't built with the ability to eject all equipment together and possibly efficiently detonated as one so the shipyards can be kept intact, forcing the enemy to use its very expensive missiles to lay waste, saving your own. And if the enemy fails to destroy the base perhaps it can be retaken.

It's a cold slap in the face to lose a base to the enemy, but even colder to have to destroy your own with your own missiles. I understand the alternative is even worse, but can't believe bases aren't pre-built with this in mind.

Because if a Manty relief force/cavalry had just so happened to come across the wall at the moment of detonation would have been a shame.

War of Honor, Chapter 57 wrote:"It's confirmed, Sir. All of them."
Admiral of the Red Allen Higgins was a man of only middling height, with a round, almost chubby face that was usually a faithful mirror of his affable nature. At the moment, that face was the color of old oatmeal and the eyes were haunted.
He stared down at the pitiless display and felt like a fly in the path of Juggernaut as the Peep attack force rumbled down upon him. Thirty-two superdreadnoughts, an unknown number of them SD(P)s. There were also at least some CLACs in that oncoming freight train of destruction. There had to be, because the four hundred-strong LAC strike he'd sent out to meet them had been ripped apart by an even stronger LAC counterattack.
And to oppose it, once his LACs had been effectively destroyed, he'd had seven SD(P)s, sixteen pre-pod SDs, four CLACs with less than thirty LACs between them, and nineteen battlecruisers and cruisers. He'd thought he might still be able to accomplish something, given his outnumbered SD(P)s' range advantage. But he'd been wrong. As the Peeps had just demonstrated by destroying all seven of them from a range in excess of forty million kilometers.
His remaining twenty capital ships were hopelessly outclassed. The incredible missile storm which had wiped away his SD(P)s was proof enough of that. Thank God that at least he'd held them back when he sent in the SD(P)s! Thousands of RMN personnel were still alive because of that simple decision on his part. A decision he'd tossed off almost casually at the time.
But that was the only mercy which had been vouchsafed to him.
"We can't stop them," he said softly and looked up to meet his chief of staff's equally shocked eyes at last. "Anything we send out to meet them will only end up giving them extra target practice," he grated. "And the same thing is true of the shipyards. Hell, we always depended on the mobile force for the system's real security. Why bother to upgrade the forts to fire MDMs? That's what the frigging Fleet was for! Goddamn that bastard Janacek."
"Sir, how—I mean, what do we do now?" the chief of staff asked almost desperately.
"There's only one thing we can do," Higgins ground out. "I am not going to be another Elvis Santino, or even another Silas Markham. No more of my people are going to be killed in a battle we can't win anyway."
"But, Sir, if you just abandon the yards, the Admiralty will—"
"Fuck the Admiralty!" Higgins snarled. "If they want to court-martial me, so much the better. I'd love to have an opportunity to discuss their excuse for a naval policy in front of a formal court! But right now what matters is saving everyone and everything we can . . . and we can't save the yards."
The chief of staff swallowed hard, but he couldn't disagree.
"We don't have time to set scuttling charges," Higgins went on in a harsh, flat voice. "Get every work crew back to the main facility. I want all secure data wiped now. Once you've done that, set the charges and blow the entire computer core, as well. I don't want the bastards getting squat from our records. We've got about a ninety-minute window to evacuate anyone we're going to get out, and we wouldn't have the personnel lift to take more than twenty percent of the total base personnel even if we had time to embark them all. Grab the priority list and find everyone on it that you can. We're not going to be able to get all of them to a pickup point in time, but I want to pull out every tech with critical knowledge that we can."
"Yes, Sir!" The chief of staff turned away and started barking orders, obviously grateful for something—anything—to do, and Higgins rounded on his ops officer.
"While Chet handles that, I've got another job for you, Juliet." His corpse-like smile held no humor at all. "We may not have enough missiles with the legs to take those bastards on," he said, waving a hand at the tactical display. "But there's one target we can reach."
"Sir?" The ops officer looked as confused as her voice sounded, and Higgins barked a travesty of a laugh.
"We don't have time to set demolition charges, Juliet. So I want you to lay in a fire plan. As we pull out, I want an old-fashioned nuke on top of every building slip, every immobile ship, every fabrication center. Everything. The only thing you don't hit are the personnel platforms. You understand me?"
"Aye, aye, Sir," she got out, her expression aghast at the thought of the trillions upon trillions of dollars of irreplaceable hardware and half-completed hulls she was about to destroy.
"Then do it," he grated, and turned back to the pitiless display once more.