New Manty ship ideas.

Vince wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:For that matter if the MAlign can figure out a sneaky way to strike the sensor arrays that could open up even the Manticoran home system to a follow-up strike. (After all multi-km wide arrays, out past the hyper limit, aren't the easiest things in the world to protect)

The multi-km wide arrays that have been described in text are located inside the hyper limit, in order to protect them. The ones watching over the Barnett system were one light minute inside the hyper limit.

Ashes of Victory, Chapter 35 wrote:His outermost sensor shell was seventeen light-minutes from the primary, safely within the hyper limit to at least make hit-and-run raids on it difficult, but far enough out from the gravitational center of Barnett to give the enormous passive arrays a reach of almost two and a half light-weeks, over which they could expect to pick up the hyper transit of anything much bigger than a courier boat. That range put them nine light-minutes outside the planet Enki, and the actual range to the platform closest to the Manties was about thirteen light-minutes. Which meant it would be another—he checked the time—ten minutes and twenty-six seconds before he got a light-speed report from the sensors with the best look at whatever was coming at him.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

Oops. For some reason I got it into my head that the the Manticoran arrays had to be outside the hyper limit in order to be isolated enough from the impeller noise 'in-system' to work efficiently. But now that I look I'm not finding anything like that.

I did find an assumption of their size in Storm from the Shadows "In the case of a star system like Manticore, those arrays could be literally thousands of kilometers across, with an exquisite sensitivity capable of picking up things like hyper-footprints and often even impeller signatures light-months out from the system primary"



I also found a related oddity in Echoes of Honor "The huge, sensitive, deep-system passive sensor arrays standing sentry over the Haven System for the Capital Fleet, for example, measured something on the order of a thousand kilometers in diameter and could detect the footprint of even a normal hyper translation at a range of up to a hundred light-hours. He had to assume the Manties' arrays were even better"

It seems unlikely to me that the Manticoran arrays really were a full 7x better (I assume a light-month is 30 light-days; so 720 light-hours); so I think something odd is going on there...

kzt wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:In system detections can make use of active radar like transmissions with passive detectors that if they don't detect the signal sound the alarm. Doing this with some kind of FTL tech would give fast warning.

Also there has to be some kind of similar detection system for finding asteroids meteors and comets. Such a system should be able to find a spider drive ship.

With the new data they should be able to mod a ghost rider to detect the grav pulses from the grav drive.

No, radar gives you a detection range of a few million KM max, assuming the target isn't composed of some sort of RAM. The inverse square effects are a bitch. If it's built of RAM you are talking under a light second. Plus the return pulse is moving at light speed, so a rapidly moving target arrives shortly after the detection pulse.

No to mention that the MAN spiders are invisible to radar, it's part of what they do.

Asteroids are large and moving at tens of km/sec, not tens or hundreds of thousands of km/sec. Asteroids are also not engineered to be difficult to detect and are present for decades to allow for detection over time.

And no, they don't have any test hardware, or designs with which to build them with which to conduct any tests. What they have is a handwaving explanation by someone peripherally involved, which may or may not be accurate or leave out critical elements.

Bolding mine.

Radar/LIDAR etc in Honorverse gives targeting at 10's of Millions of kilometers and much greater distances. Their MAIN sensor suite to tell where/who is gravitic, but actual targeting data even at MDM range is done via old RADAR/LIDAR sensors on the broadsies, keyholes of ships. Why else in every battle are the commanders waiting for light based sensors to pick up and parse out a ship formation after obtaining the FTL hyper translation footprint.

After all DW has stated that RD's can't be used to give targeting information(even thought they have the antennas for it) which means they can't obtain it either(except they do)........ yea, I know, absurd, but that is what he keeps claiming in his books lately, so um yea.

Relax wrote:Radar/LIDAR etc in Honorverse gives targeting at 10's of Millions of kilometers and much greater distances. Their MAIN sensor suite to tell where/who is gravitic, but actual targeting data even at MDM range is done via old RADAR/LIDAR sensors on the broadsies, keyholes of ships. Why else in every battle are the commanders waiting for light based sensors to pick up and parse out a ship formation after obtaining the FTL hyper translation footprint.

Really?

"Which, unfortunately, would not save Grayson, for neither the planet, its shipyards, its orbital farms, nor its forts could dodge, and immobility was the Achilles' heel of any fixed defenses. The Peeps could break off into the outer system and come back in at as much as eighty percent light-speed, and missiles launched from that velocity against nonevading targets would be deadly. Once their drives burned out, the incoming missiles would be impossible to track on gravitics, and even Manticoran radar had a maximum detection range of little more than a million kilometers against such small targets. Oh, they might get a sniff at as much as two million, given the Peeps' less effective penetration ECM, but they could never localize at more than a million—and if the Peeps launched at .8 c, their birds' drives would boost them to .99 c before burnout. That would give the point defense systems three seconds to lock on, engage, and stop them, which brought the old cliché about the snowflake in Hell forcibly to mind."

Lord Skimper wrote:Radar itself won't work but a sent signal that must be received if not an alarm sounds and using gravity waves or pulses for a FTL signal and detection basis.

If you're suggesting what I think you are, a system based on broken beams, you're ignoring the issue of the scale of a star system. You'd need an impossible number of detection rigs to get even a tiny chance of detecting something.

kzt wrote:

Relax wrote:Radar/LIDAR etc in Honorverse gives targeting at 10's of Millions of kilometers and much greater distances. Their MAIN sensor suite to tell where/who is gravitic, but actual targeting data even at MDM range is done via old RADAR/LIDAR sensors on the broadsies, keyholes of ships. Why else in every battle are the commanders waiting for light based sensors to pick up and parse out a ship formation after obtaining the FTL hyper translation footprint.

Really?

"Which, unfortunately, would not save Grayson, for neither the planet, its shipyards, its orbital farms, nor its forts could dodge, and immobility was the Achilles' heel of any fixed defenses. The Peeps could break off into the outer system and come back in at as much as eighty percent light-speed, and missiles launched from that velocity against nonevading targets would be deadly. Once their drives burned out, the incoming missiles would be impossible to track on gravitics, and even Manticoran radar had a maximum detection range of little more than a million kilometers against such small targets. Oh, they might get a sniff at as much as two million, given the Peeps' less effective penetration ECM, but they could never localize at more than a million—and if the Peeps launched at .8 c, their birds' drives would boost them to .99 c before burnout. That would give the point defense systems three seconds to lock on, engage, and stop them, which brought the old cliché about the snowflake in Hell forcibly to mind."

Brilliant argument tactic! Switch subjects!

Fail. Try again.

Relax wrote:Fail. Try again.

Perhaps you would like to show where missile sized targets are detected and tracked by Radar at the "10's of Millions of kilometers and much greater distances" as you claimed?

Unless you are claiming that the way one destroys heavily defended thousand km sized targets is to sail a freighter loaded with marines carrying wire cutters up to them?

Relax wrote:

kzt wrote:Really?

"Which, unfortunately, would not save Grayson, for neither the planet, its shipyards, its orbital farms, nor its forts could dodge, and immobility was the Achilles' heel of any fixed defenses. The Peeps could break off into the outer system and come back in at as much as eighty percent light-speed, and missiles launched from that velocity against nonevading targets would be deadly. Once their drives burned out, the incoming missiles would be impossible to track on gravitics, and even Manticoran radar had a maximum detection range of little more than a million kilometers against such small targets. Oh, they might get a sniff at as much as two million, given the Peeps' less effective penetration ECM, but they could never localize at more than a million—and if the Peeps launched at .8 c, their birds' drives would boost them to .99 c before burnout. That would give the point defense systems three seconds to lock on, engage, and stop them, which brought the old cliché about the snowflake in Hell forcibly to mind."

Brilliant argument tactic! Switch subjects!

Fail. Try again.

How is that changing subjects? You said that radar works at tens of millions of kilometers, and kzt gave you textev that stated that it was limited to an absolute max of 2 million with it only being useful at 1.

You should read what people post before you declare it a fail.

crewdude48 wrote:
How is that changing subjects? You said that radar works at tens of millions of kilometers, and kzt gave you textev that stated that it was limited to an absolute max of 2 million with it only being useful at 1.

You should read what people post before you declare it a fail.

Subject is ships not missiles. Kzt knows this damned well and purposefully changed the subject to missiles.

Double fail. Might try upholding your own reading comprehension standards.

Before you NIT: Obviously stealth changes that...

Werrf wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:Radar itself won't work but a sent signal that must be received if not an alarm sounds and using gravity waves or pulses for a FTL signal and detection basis.

If you're suggesting what I think you are, a system based on broken beams, you're ignoring the issue of the scale of a star system. You'd need an impossible number of detection rigs to get even a tiny chance of detecting something.

Beams or pulses of FTL beams as part of a system wide communications system with civilian signals being sent is a full sphere all around. 3 billion people on one planet encouraged to "phone" or perhaps "Skype" the 3 billion others. With all the tourists staying in system etc.... Lots of need but with free calls once the system is up lots of communications being bounced all over the place.

Also how would spider drive ships detect see anything that isn't shining out with a wedge?

As for not having any data on working spider drives the Manties might without realising it up front as the spider drive ship went right by a ghost rider platform, who knows if it detected some anomalous grav pulses but didn't know it was to make note of them, after analysis might just see something that speaking to the Sollie tech traitor starts to draw ones attention. Plus the intercepted message by the DD? That happened to be in the right accidental time. During Oyster bay.

Relax wrote:Subject is ships not missiles. Kzt knows this damned well and purposefully changed the subject to missiles.

Given that I'm sure you'll easily find a mention in the text of radar used at tens of millions of kms, so why don't you post that example?

I suspect you'll find it harder than you think to find that example.