New Manty ship ideas.

The junction forts were established before the laser head was even invented. The paradigm that preceded the laser head was energy weapon dominated combat. In this environment with the severe limitations on effective weapons range, invading forces were far less vulnerable and actually had an advantage given tactical surprise.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Annachie wrote:Lets also not forget in this impossibility of attacking through a wormhole that RFC pretty much contradicts himself on the subject. (A specific example is when the forts are first mentioned and the loss rate expected among the on duty forsts)

He did a decent job of walking that back as mostly that that pre-war Manticoran sim underestimating the effectiveness of laserheads, plus apparently noone had ever tried an assault through a fortified wormhole so its not like there were real world examples to calibrate the model with.

Don't forget that scenario was looking at something like an 88 ship simultaneous transit by BBs. Even for 16 mton forts, suddenly being confronted with 400 mtons of BBs is going to take a while to wipe out and you're going to take some licks in return.

(Those pre-pod forts may also have been too close it; within actual energy range. Not taking advantage of the standoff ability of laser head missiles which let you get free hits in because the transitting ships can't launch their missiles until their clear the grav shear.)


But there certainly could be an element of refining, or ever changing, how he envisioned a wormhole assault would play out on a mechanical level. I don't think there was every and change in his belief that it was a suicidal thing to do; but how much damage you might do while dying may have been toned down. (or not )

Browne wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Don't forget that scenario was looking at something like an 88 ship simultaneous transit by BBs. Even for 16 mton forts, suddenly being confronted with 400 mtons of BBs is going to take a while to wipe out and you're going to take some licks in return.

Just a note. IIRC the Manticoran Wormhole has the highest ceiling for mass at 200Mtons. So I think that the Torch Wormhole mass ceiling would be lower.

Does anyone have textev for mass ceiling for other wormholes? More or less mass then the Manticoran Wormhole?

I don't recall any other wormhole mass ceilings being mentioned...

(But remember that mass limit is specific to each separate bridge of the junctions. So with the Peeps they were worried about a simultaneous transit from the Trevor's Star and Basilisk termini - allowing them to push twice the normal mass limit through. Although thinking about it, I know Manticore was worried about that, but it's possible I misremembered and that particular pre-war sim was only looking at a single source mass transit)

What about planet landing ships. Something with its own counter grav that can safely land on a planet surface. Without prior planetary preparation. If you have time you could just make huge LAC bays vertical underground, for star ships of any size. Presumably they would be hidden from detection until launched even direct observation from a dispatch boat or newsies ship wouldn't detect them, other than passively seeing the 200 metre bay door, which could be disguised. On the surface / under the surface, the grav plating will let people on board move about without problem. Could even make underground vertical building slips.

Countergrav can lift anything to orbit. There was some worry about the gravity crushing the ship on the surface, but that is not a problem. If 1.35 g is going to cause a problem, the 5g that Honor put the escape ships through escaping from the prison planet would have done much worse.

Underground vertical shipyards would not take up much space. Alternatively with 300+ stories tall buildings you could have building slips or just docking ports inside buildings.

If the ships have counter grav built in, launching and landing could easily be done under ship own power.

Brilliant. We will put the shipyard on the planet so in case the next time Oyster Bay happens, it will sterilize a continent and kill everybody. What fun!

Lord Skimper, before we go any further with this, you still have to produce a compelling reason for building hidden construction bases. You start out with the assumption that they need to be hidden, but have not given any good reason. Haven had a reason for Bolthole, but at this point they don't need to keep it hidden any longer. Mesa has a good reason, and has a hidden base already. Manticore has already decided that it doesn't need hidden or distributed construction bases--what it needs is to be able to defend them. And they believe that they can defend them right now. The League has not seen any reason to build hidden bases, and I don't see any need for them. So why do you continue to insist on this idea?

Until you can provide a compelling reason for a hidden construction base, all you are doing is spitting out irrelevant ideas looking for a good use. There is no need to even comment on the problems with your latest concept.

Oh, they still have a reason: The MA.

Well we did have a short silly "what if" not too long about the effect of landing an SD on a planet.


But basically, we have no evidence that counter grav can scale up endlessly.

The largest vehicles I believe we've seen with counter-grav are in the < 500 ton range. A very long way from even a LAC, much less a capital ship.


Odds are that there's an upper limit to counter grav around the size of a cargo shuttle (otherwise people would use larger cargo shuttles, or just land merchant ships to offload) making the whole idea a technical nonstarter (as well and a solution in search of a problem)

Lord Skimper wrote:What about planet landing ships. Something with its own counter grav that can safely land on a planet surface. Without prior planetary preparation. If you have time you could just make huge LAC bays vertical underground, for star ships of any size. Presumably they would be hidden from detection until launched even direct observation from a dispatch boat or newsies ship wouldn't detect them, other than passively seeing the 200 metre bay door, which could be disguised. On the surface / under the surface, the grav plating will let people on board move about without problem. Could even make underground vertical building slips.

Countergrav can lift anything to orbit. There was some worry about the gravity crushing the ship on the surface, but that is not a problem. If 1.35 g is going to cause a problem, the 5g that Honor put the escape ships through escaping from the prison planet would have done much worse.

Underground vertical shipyards would not take up much space. Alternatively with 300+ stories tall buildings you could have building slips or just docking ports inside buildings.

If the ships have counter grav built in, launching and landing could easily be done under ship own power.

Man soon we can have the Voltron Force defending our systems with ships coming out from ground, volanco, and underwater bases.

Jonathan_S wrote:Well we did have a short silly "what if" not too long about the effect of landing an SD on a planet.


But basically, we have no evidence that counter grav can scale up endlessly.

The largest vehicles I believe we've seen with counter-grav are in the < 500 ton range. A very long way from even a LAC, much less a capital ship.


Odds are that there's an upper limit to counter grav around the size of a cargo shuttle (otherwise people would use larger cargo shuttles, or just land merchant ships to offload) making the whole idea a technical nonstarter (as well and a solution in search of a problem)

Some of the large cargo shuttles that brought weapons in from "Firebrand" had a cargo of 1000 tons. IIRC the cargo hold was not full. So 1000 tons plus the shuttle at least can be afected by counter grav.

And on landing ships your right. There is more room in space. So ships park there and send shuttles down so you don't have a spaceport 1000s of km in area to handle the ships a major world would need.

Is it possible to borrow the submarine analogy here and ask if it is possible to make a "perescope" that can peek out of hyperspace into N space or vice versa, peek into hyperspace?