Hey the OBS is solar powered!

Duckk wrote:The orbital bombardment system is fairly complex. It has to be, because you can't hang just anything out in the sucking void of space, with no maintenance, for centuries on end, and expect it to work. Space is a harsh, harsh environment, so the OBS must have systems involved to keep it operational under any circumstance. So crippling the OBS is likely to be a very temporary inconvenience before the repair drones or whatever bring it back online.

Secondly, there's no way to guarantee that destroying or otherwise negating the OBS isn't going to trigger something in the Temple. The Inner Circle most definitely does not want to wake up whatever it is that's sleeping under the Temple. They have to deal with the Church first before thinking about getting rid of the Rakurai.

Yes, it is complex. However, it can't have an unlimited number of replacement parts. As far as I know, there isn't anyplace that it can get new parts from.

The sand would be a wonderful abalative, taking off the exterior of the hull, sensors, solar panels, etc. Granted, it could take some time. But, it would help to degrade the OBS and/or force it to utilize limited resources.

We know the OBS has active weapon systems (it shot down Merlin's attempts to get close to it with a SNARC). It's entirely possible, even probable, that the system also has heavy shielding to protect it from being shot at, or at the very least particle shielding to protect it from micrometeorites and other space junk.

Hi LexisGranpa,

Welcome to the forums, please enjoy your favorite simulated beverage on the simulated forum.

The Rakurai or OBS evidently has its own industrial module that can make whatever it needs, with access to all the space materials it needs [not limited to the moon], as demonstrated by its 1000+ T-years of operations [including the ~200 Safehold years of the war against the fallen] besides the ability to rearm itself as it has done already, so running it out of ammunition won't work either.

Any ideas that will work will be highly applauded as none yet suggested have come close, so keep thinking.

L

lexisgrandpa wrote:

Duckk wrote:The orbital bombardment system is fairly complex. It has to be, because you can't hang just anything out in the sucking void of space, with no maintenance, for centuries on end, and expect it to work. Space is a harsh, harsh environment, so the OBS must have systems involved to keep it operational under any circumstance. So crippling the OBS is likely to be a very temporary inconvenience before the repair drones or whatever bring it back online.

Secondly, there's no way to guarantee that destroying or otherwise negating the OBS isn't going to trigger something in the Temple. The Inner Circle most definitely does not want to wake up whatever it is that's sleeping under the Temple. They have to deal with the Church first before thinking about getting rid of the Rakurai.

Yes, it is complex. However, it can't have an unlimited number of replacement parts. As far as I know, there isn't anyplace that it can get new parts from.

The sand would be a wonderful abalative, taking off the exterior of the hull, sensors, solar panels, etc. Granted, it could take some time. But, it would help to degrade the OBS and/or force it to utilize limited resources.

The Rakurai or OBS evidently has its own industrial module that can make whatever it needs, with access to all the space materials it needs [not limited to the moon], as demonstrated by its 1000+ T-years of operations [including the ~200 Safehold years of the war against the fallen] besides the ability to rearm itself as it has done already, so running it out of ammunition won't work either.

Uhh...what? The War of the Fallen did not last 200 years.

Well, given the current technological abilities of the Safehold civilization,overt force by whatever means is out of the question.As has been mentioned,the SNARCs sent to investigate the platform were taken out quite handily at a good distance away.The AI running the thing would also be able to differentiate between regular space crud coming at it and a methodical sandblasting operation aimed at cutting its power source off, and I don't really think Merlin and crew would want it's fault tables to inform the supervisory AI that 'something funny is going on here'. That might be a good way to insure a Really,Really Bad Day...

But it does occur to me that since Prince Nahrmahn has caused Owl to mature out that he might find a way to infiltrate the platform electronically and render it ineffective. I'd think there would have to be some communication between the platform and the Temple, even if it were a simple check of "you there?" "yeah" by the housekeeping functions of the Temple, Owl could use that channel to gain access to the system.

Of course, this could also lead to the RRBD scenario.

It also seems to make sense that the platform would have some sort of backup power system in the event that the primary system went down for whatever reason.

Hi Duckk,

I could need some help here, but from what I remember, in one of his posts RFC referred to the period involving the war of the fallen, the building of the temple and the last of the archangels etc 'going away' as around 200 Safehold years or so; plus a counting error that resulted in some confusion regarding the thousand year figure cited before the archangels came back.

It probably included the whole period from the creation, but as I recall, the roughly 200 years added to the almost 900 years being counted helped partly explain the 1000 years confusion when Terran years were ~10% longer.

Please feel free to clear up the details I mixed up.

L

Duckk wrote:

The Rakurai or OBS evidently has its own industrial module that can make whatever it needs, with access to all the space materials it needs [not limited to the moon], as demonstrated by its 1000+ T-years of operations [including the ~200 Safehold years of the war against the fallen] besides the ability to rearm itself as it has done already, so running it out of ammunition won't work either.

Uhh...what? The War of the Fallen did not last 200 years.

Duckk wrote:We know the OBS has active weapon systems (it shot down Merlin's attempts to get close to it with a SNARC). It's entirely possible, even probable, that the system also has heavy shielding to protect it from being shot at, or at the very least particle shielding to protect it from micrometeorites and other space junk.

Yes, the OBS has weapons, lasers if I remember correctly, which shot down the SNARC Merlin sent to take a closer look. Those would not be effective against a cloud of sand.

Now, speculating on my part, any meteorite shielding would tend to work on the iron component of which most of them are composed. That would not work on sand.

As paranoid as Langhorn was, he would not want much emissions from the OBS. These could draw in the Gbaba. He would would want to limit heavy shielding and heavy weapons to prevent that.

lyonheart wrote:Hi LexisGranpa,

Welcome to the forums, please enjoy your favorite simulated beverage on the simulated forum.

The Rakurai or OBS evidently has its own industrial module that can make whatever it needs, with access to all the space materials it needs [not limited to the moon], as demonstrated by its 1000+ T-years of operations [including the ~200 Safehold years of the war against the fallen] besides the ability to rearm itself as it has done already, so running it out of ammunition won't work either.
(snip)

Yes, it could have an industrial module. But where does it get raw materials? I don't see a small fleet of ore carriers flying around picking them up. This would generate emissions which Langhorn wouldn't want.

lexisgrandpa wrote:Yes, the OBS has weapons, lasers if I remember correctly, which shot down the SNARC Merlin sent to take a closer look. Those would not be effective against a cloud of sand.

Now, speculating on my part, any meteorite shielding would tend to work on the iron component of which most of them are composed. That would not work on sand.

As paranoid as Langhorn was, he would not want much emissions from the OBS. These could draw in the Gbaba. He would would want to limit heavy shielding and heavy weapons to prevent that.

That misses the point I was making. If the OBS was liberally supplied with active defenses, then it stands to reason that it was also supplied with passive defenses as well.

Furthermore, any kind of emissions from a shield system would be impossible to see from interstellar range. The Gbaba would have to be in-system to be able to detect it. And if they are that close, then humanity is screwed regardless of whether or not the OBS is active.

lexisgrandpa wrote:Yes, it could have an industrial module. But where does it get raw materials? I don't see a small fleet of ore carriers flying around picking them up. This would generate emissions which Langhorn wouldn't want.

Tend to disagree about emissions. As our Lord of Safehold. RFC, has said in past posts, low power electro-magnetic (EM) emissions would get quickly lost in the general background radiation from natural sources like the sun and jovian-type planets (Anyone remember a description of the Safehold Solar System?). Even with our current tech level, you can create an on-going EM black hole for surprisingly large operations. Add things like whisker lasers and the such and it would take the Gbaba to make physical entry into the Safehold System and be right on top of the planet for detection to be probable.