Solly Fleet Advancements

Weird Harold wrote:

Alizon wrote:That being said, the original idea of hyperspace intercepts to avoid system defense LAC's is still a valid strategy.

I'm not sure how "valid" a strategy is, which gives you so many additional layers to patrol.

Each band of hyperspace is mutually invisible to each other as well as invisible to N-space. The only thing necessary to defeat your hyperspace pickets is to use a band not normally used for a given class of ship -- especially near origin or destination systems.

Initially, commerce raiding in hyperspace would be effective, but it requires more ships to be effective than lurking near arrival points like pirates would. Compare Giscard's deployments for n-space raiding and for blockading the Selkar Rift.

How valid a tactic it is depends largely on the relative danger of attempting the same intercept in n-space where defending LAC's are present.

It's been well discussed on this forum that LAC's are the ultimate in commerce protection units. Their relative low cost coupled with their high acceleration rates, high degree of maneuverability, general toughness and, in the case with certain models, highly effective missile or beam armaments make them exceptionally deadly.

It has been mentioned here that SLN raiding forces will simply be chewed up by these defending LAC forces preventing them from being effective. While I'm not of the opinion that the presence of a LAC force makes this necessarily so, there will be cases where some systems are just too well defended by LAC forces for an SLN force to effectively raid.

In such a case, attempting to intercept via hyperspace is an alternative. In this case, lots of things that typically work against this tactic actually work in the SLN's favor.

The first and most obvious advantage is it effectively neutralizes any LAC force operating in the system defense role. Manticorian forces often will enjoy a significant missile range advantage over SLN forces however reduced senor ranges reduce or can even eliminate this advantage. Finally, while warships which might be escorting convoys probably have a number of hyperspace bands they can reach, the commercial vessels they are escorting can't so this limits the number of bands you have to consider.

Chances are you can probably narrow this selection even further by the simple expedient of knowing which bands the typical vessel operating in this region is likely to use or even the bands that vessels on this particular route typically use.

Once you've selected the band, there's nothing to stop you from stopping and simply translating a scout vessel up one band and down one band from the most likely band in order to determine if you were wrong.

This isn't to say that this is the ideal intercept. But against a system strongly defended by LAC's patrolling actively around the most likely translation points along the hyperlimit or the knowledge that the escorting force is likely to have escorts with significant MDM capability, a hyperspace intercept may be the best option remaining to you and is likely to.

It's even better than that. If the LACs produce a heavily guarded transition point, then logically most merchants will transit in and out of the system using those areas, likely well within a light minute of the center, which will be located very close to the hyperlimit, as time is money to a merchant.

On the Alpha side, that means most outbound merchants will cross the alpha wall with negligible velocity within a light second of center of this point. Which is deep inside energy range of a warship waiting there. This works just fine on a RMN warship too, as a DD in energy range or SDM range of a SLN BC will likely not come out really well.

Additionally the warship is just waiting there so it can have its hyperdrive all warmed up, so if someone was to do something highly unexpected, like having a hostile ship appear on the alpha side inside MDM range but outside SDM range, the SLN ship flees to either real space or Beta before the missiles arrive. I'd suggest Beta myself as likelier to work out better for the SLN.

That because if you chase a ship upward into higher bands your effective range drops. So if your SLN ship was 5 light minutes away from a RMN ship with MDMs on real space (way out of range of any of your weapons) if he chases you into Alpha he's now ~5 light seconds away, which is SDM range. If he chases you into Beta he's now ~125,000 km away, which is knife-fighting range for energy weapons.

kzt wrote:It's even better than that. If the LACs produce a heavily guarded transition point, then logically most merchants will transit in and out of the system using those areas, likely well within a light minute of the center, which will be located very close to the hyperlimit, as time is money to a merchant.

On the Alpha side, that means most outbound merchants will cross the alpha wall with negligible velocity within a light second of center of this point. Which is deep inside energy range of a warship waiting there. This works just fine on a RMN warship too, as a DD in energy range or SDM range of a SLN BC will likely not come out really well.

Additionally the warship is just waiting there so it can have its hyperdrive all warmed up, so if someone was to do something highly unexpected, like having a hostile ship appear on the alpha side inside MDM range but outside SDM range, the SLN ship flees to either real space or Beta before the missiles arrive. I'd suggest Beta myself as likelier to work out better for the SLN.

That because if you chase a ship upward into higher bands your effective range drops. So if your SLN ship was 5 light minutes away from a RMN ship with MDMs on real space (way out of range of any of your weapons) if he chases you into Alpha he's now ~5 light seconds away, which is SDM range. If he chases you into Beta he's now ~125,000 km away, which is knife-fighting range for energy weapons.

I like that, using the Manties own logical commerce protection strategies against them.

One other thing I failed to mention earlier is that of experience. The longer you do something, the better you get at it. Hyperspace combat probably isn't something that most have thought about all that seriously since combat rarely takes place there. Under any normal circumstance where the two sides have any degree of parity, the cons of hyperspace combat outweigh the advantages.

However, the very disparity in technology between the GA and the SLN changes this formula so for possibly the first time, the SLN could have a compelling reason to begin exploring this option, developing doctrine related to it and possibly equipment specialized to it.

I think that as you pointed out kzt, it has a lot to recommend itself to a raider under the right circumstances. However I would like to also explore how this would impact Battle Fleet in it's defense of the Solarian worlds from the GA. For example, how short are the detection ranges and if they aren't short enough, what can you do to shorten them further.

For example, could you pick a spot you estimate the GA fleet will use to approach the system you're defending, drop your wedges and generally pretend to not be there. Maybe use reaction thrusters and grav plates to reposition the fleet sort of like a slow submarine trying to gain firing position on a convoy without being detected. Would it be possible to draw a GA fleet into actual energy range?

How about seeding those system defense pods in hyperspace using the FC of those ships. Something like the Cathparact is pretty much useless in n-space as you're probably they're never going to be close enough to a GA fleet to use, but could weapons like this have the range to match the shortened range of GA MDM's while in hyperspace?

I mean, the key thing the SLN needs is a long range missile system that can match an MDM's range which they can't possibly deploy in the short term. But in hyperspace, would the likely detection range being within the range of something like the Cathparact and could you further seed the approaches with missile pods in hyperspace?

Of course, there's always a move countermove aspect to all of this. If you're the SLN and you pull this off once, there's going to be a reaction from the GA forces to counter that move. Let's say next time the CLAC's launch LAC's when approaching their alpha translation point while still in hyper to scout out any SLN fleet lying doggo and teach them a lesson.

That brings about SLN moves that take advantage of the LAC's lack of a hyperdrive. Maybe only a couple of SLN scouts are sitting in the expected hyperband and they translate up or down to where the fleet is at which point the fleet makes a hypertranslation into point blank range of the GA fleet.

It would largely end up being a huge game of hide in seek in which the loser dies.

kzt wrote:It's even better than that. If the LACs produce a heavily guarded transition point, then logically most merchants will transit in and out of the system using those areas, likely well within a light minute of the center, which will be located very close to the hyperlimit, as time is money to a merchant.

On the Alpha side, that means most outbound merchants will cross the alpha wall with negligible velocity within a light second of center of this point. Which is deep inside energy range of a warship waiting there. This works just fine on a RMN warship too, as a DD in energy range or SDM range of a SLN BC will likely not come out really well.

Additionally the warship is just waiting there so it can have its hyperdrive all warmed up, so if someone was to do something highly unexpected, like having a hostile ship appear on the alpha side inside MDM range but outside SDM range, the SLN ship flees to either real space or Beta before the missiles arrive. I'd suggest Beta myself as likelier to work out better for the SLN.

That because if you chase a ship upward into higher bands your effective range drops. So if your SLN ship was 5 light minutes away from a RMN ship with MDMs on real space (way out of range of any of your weapons) if he chases you into Alpha he's now ~5 light seconds away, which is SDM range. If he chases you into Beta he's now ~125,000 km away, which is knife-fighting range for energy weapons.

First, can't you crash transition down through the bands in seconds? The merchant ships don't have to make themselves nice near stationary targets in the Alpha bands.

Second, I personally guess there's something weirdly nonlinear about hyperspace stretching near systems because we don't see convoys or fleets scattered across many thousands of km when dropping out of hyper; they still seem to be formed up in defensive formation. And when leaving systems they don't seem to need to spread way out to have adequate wedge clearance in the next higher hyper band.

IOW they don't seem to be subject to a 62x shrinking or growing of the inter-ship separation. (Further when doing a crash translation down from the Delta band they don't appear to suffer a 2000x increase in inter-ship separation. For a non-crash transition you could argue that the ships keep reestablishing formation after each band they drop to; but that doesn't work for a crash transition)

You can't crash up. You have to transit up one band at a time. Which is why you sit their and wait in stealth. If a merchant doesn't come close enough for you to bag with a graser as they crash transit they are simply not going to see you as they flash by.

You may not get them coming, but you can get them going. But merchants don't usually crash transit, it stresses the drive and that increases operational costs.

The relative size is a function of the fact that there is a speed of light in each zone, which is conveniently measured in km/sec and is oddly enough ~300,000 km/sec. (The Universe of Honor Harrington - "Since .3 c (approx. 89,907.6 km./sec.) was the maximum velocity at which an "upward" translation into hyper-space could be made, the maximum initial velocity in hyper-space was .024 c (or 7,192.6 km./sec.)." )

Since there is a 1:1 correspondence between hyperspace and real space (which is why the hyper log works) and the speed of light is measured the same on each band you are obviously compressing space.

For example, you enter hyperspace at point A on real-space, which corresponds to point A' on Alpha. You then move a light second on Alpha and exit at point B' in hyper, the exit in real-space we will call point B. So how far did you go as measured in real space? Per the Universe of Honor Harrington you went 61 light seconds.

So if you start with two ships in real-space on these points 61 light seconds apart; a ship at point A and a ship at point B; and transit to Alpha, how far apart will them be when they appear on Alpha at A' and B'?

1 light second as measured on Alpha.

kzt wrote:You can't crash up. You have to transit up one band at a time. Which is why you sit their and wait in stealth. If a merchant doesn't come close enough for you to bag with a graser as they crash transit they are simply not going to see you as they flash by.

You may not get them coming, but you can get them going. But merchants don't usually crash transit, it stresses the drive and that increases operational costs.

The relative size is a function of the fact that there is a speed of light in each zone, which is conveniently measured in km/sec and is oddly enough ~300,000 km/sec. (The Universe of Honor Harrington - "Since .3 c (approx. 89,907.6 km./sec.) was the maximum velocity at which an "upward" translation into hyper-space could be made, the maximum initial velocity in hyper-space was .024 c (or 7,192.6 km./sec.)." )

Since there is a 1:1 correspondence between hyperspace and real space (which is why the hyper log works) and the speed of light is measured the same on each band you are obviously compressing space.

For example, you enter hyperspace at point A on real-space, which corresponds to point A' on Alpha. You then move a light second on Alpha and exit at point B' in hyper, the exit in real-space we will call point B. So how far did you go as measured in real space? Per the Universe of Honor Harrington you went 61 light seconds.

So if you start with two ships in real-space on these points 61 light seconds apart; a ship at point A and a ship at point B; and transit to Alpha, how far apart will them be when they appear on Alpha at A' and B'?

1 light second as measured on Alpha.

I agree that's what you'd expect from a 62x shrinkage between n-space and Alpha.

What I'm saying is that none of the logical implications of that expected shrinkage are mentioned in the books.

If you need 100 km safe separation between wedges (so say 250 km between ships) and the you get 62x closer when entering hyper then the logical implication is that you must first separate any ship formation to 62x normal separation (15,500 km between ships); but we don't see any mention of that.

And if you were 100 km apart in Alpha and you spread 62x farther when entering hyper then your formation is scattered to 15,500 km between ships; but we don't see that.


Or for a more extreme example look at when Honor brought the convoy back to Yeltson in HothQ. They explicitly make a continuous transition from the Delta bands, across the Gamma wall, and straight through Gamma, 4 minutes to cross the Beta bands, and down through Alpha bands to n-space. You'd expect the ships to be 2178 times further apart than when they started; So maybe half a million km apart. I think that would have been worth a mention if it had happened, but again no mention of ships spacing being altered by moving up or down a hyperband.


I don't know why it isn't ever mentioned in the books; I'm guessing because hyper doesn't (narratively) work that way we'd expect from a literal and universal application of the Velocity Multiplier.

Defending a translation point.

For merchants using Delta Bands:

Place your LAC's for anti CM role in both n space and in the delta bands with a couple DB able to crash translate and warn say a couple BC in n' space if they see hostile forces.

No reason to only defend n space. Defend the point said merchants will be coming in at. The H band itself.

wastedfly wrote:Defending a translation point.

For merchants using Delta Bands:

Place your LAC's for anti CM role in both n space and in the delta bands with a couple DB able to crash translate and warn say a couple BC in n' space if they see hostile forces.

No reason to only defend n space. Defend the point said merchants will be coming in at. The H band itself.

The whole point of the LACs is to make up for the fact that the RMN has far too few hypercapable ships to effectively secure all their planets. If you need at least a BC squadron plus a dispatch boat squadron to cover every one of the 60+ planets that RMN is responsible for I declare the war over and the SLN the winner.

Jonathan_S wrote:

kzt wrote:You can't crash up. You have to transit up one band at a time. Which is why you sit their and wait in stealth. If a merchant doesn't come close enough for you to bag with a graser as they crash transit they are simply not going to see you as they flash by.

You may not get them coming, but you can get them going. But merchants don't usually crash transit, it stresses the drive and that increases operational costs.

The relative size is a function of the fact that there is a speed of light in each zone, which is conveniently measured in km/sec and is oddly enough ~300,000 km/sec. (The Universe of Honor Harrington - "Since .3 c (approx. 89,907.6 km./sec.) was the maximum velocity at which an "upward" translation into hyper-space could be made, the maximum initial velocity in hyper-space was .024 c (or 7,192.6 km./sec.)." )

Since there is a 1:1 correspondence between hyperspace and real space (which is why the hyper log works) and the speed of light is measured the same on each band you are obviously compressing space.

For example, you enter hyperspace at point A on real-space, which corresponds to point A' on Alpha. You then move a light second on Alpha and exit at point B' in hyper, the exit in real-space we will call point B. So how far did you go as measured in real space? Per the Universe of Honor Harrington you went 61 light seconds.

So if you start with two ships in real-space on these points 61 light seconds apart; a ship at point A and a ship at point B; and transit to Alpha, how far apart will them be when they appear on Alpha at A' and B'?

1 light second as measured on Alpha.

I agree that's what you'd expect from a 62x shrinkage between n-space and Alpha.

What I'm saying is that none of the logical implications of that expected shrinkage are mentioned in the books.

If you need 100 km safe separation between wedges (so say 250 km between ships) and the you get 62x closer when entering hyper then the logical implication is that you must first separate any ship formation to 62x normal separation (15,500 km between ships); but we don't see any mention of that.

And if you were 100 km apart in Alpha and you spread 62x farther when entering hyper then your formation is scattered to 15,500 km between ships; but we don't see that.


Or for a more extreme example look at when Honor brought the convoy back to Yeltson in HothQ. They explicitly make a continuous transition from the Delta bands, across the Gamma wall, and straight through Gamma, 4 minutes to cross the Beta bands, and down through Alpha bands to n-space. You'd expect the ships to be 2178 times further apart than when they started; So maybe half a million km apart. I think that would have been worth a mention if it had happened, but again no mention of ships spacing being altered by moving up or down a hyperband.


I don't know why it isn't ever mentioned in the books; I'm guessing because hyper doesn't (narratively) work that way we'd expect from a literal and universal application of the Velocity Multiplier.

Well, I know it is not mentioned in the books, but there are only two ways in my mind to balance the descriptions.

1) the gravity that creates the hyper limit bends hyperspace near the limit, creating a less than standard differation. The problem with this answer is that would royally screw with the FTL comms. That is why I prefer...

2) Creating multiple translation fields with in a certain distance of each other and/or calibrated to each other would cause them to "lock" with each other and function almost as a single field with multiple foci. This would maintain the distance between ships in the same way a single field maintains ship size.

crewdude48 wrote:Well, I know it is not mentioned in the books, but there are only two ways in my mind to balance the descriptions.

1) the gravity that creates the hyper limit bends hyperspace near the limit, creating a less than standard differation. ...

2) Creating multiple translation fields with in a certain distance of each other and/or calibrated to each other would cause them to "lock" with each other ...

A third option?

3) The velocity multiplier is an average for each band, but the difference between the upper limit of one band is within a percent or so of being identical to the lower limit of the next higher band.

For evidence I offer Alice Truman's record setting flight from Yeltsin to Manticore, wherein it is implied that the higher one goes in a hyperband, the faster one's apparent velocity in N-space.