OBS Invulnerable?

Duckk wrote:
Solar power is just for maintenance. When it actually needs to fire it will activate its fusion plant.

But the laser defense platforms? They couldn't waste time on the activation of fusion plants: they should shoot as fast as possible.

Dilandu wrote:

Duckk wrote:
Solar power is just for maintenance. When it actually needs to fire it will activate its fusion plant.

But the laser defense platforms? They couldn't waste time on the activation of fusion plants: they should shoot as fast as possible.

So you build them with enough capacitor/battery power, kept topped up by solar power, to fire a few shots until the fusion plant comes online, or whatever. I imagine keeping space defence systems online without wasting too much power was a standard problem for the TF so there would have been standard solutions.

InvisibleBison wrote:Firstly, we should put HFQ Snippit Spoiler Warnings on these kinds of posts (That is, posts with spoilers from the HFQ Snippets ).

My post was worded so that it didn't really need a spoiler warning. Your reply definitely does.

InvisibleBison wrote:...he certainly wouldn't have set up his trump card to roll over and play nice for any TFN officer who asked it to.

You're missing the "Ranking Surviving Officer" point. If anyone survived in the explicit chain of command, Nimue wouldn't have a hope of taking control. It is the emergency protocols that would take the chain of command outside of whatever explicit list the OBS was provided and then only if the TFN Officer could convince the OBS they were the Ranking Survivor.

Weird Harold wrote:You're missing the "Ranking Surviving Officer" point. If anyone survived in the explicit chain of command, Nimue wouldn't have a hope of taking control. It is the emergency protocols that would take the chain of command outside of whatever explicit list the OBS was provided and then only if the TFN Officer could convince the OBS they were the Ranking Survivor.

I think it isn't the main problem. The main problem is - what if the Rakurai communication system is simply locked on a 100-number code? Or even - locked on personality scan of the Langhorne or someone else? It's logical enough to be done almost for sure. And any "Ranking Surviving Officer" wouldn't be able to do anuthing with that, because the simple lock in the communication system just prevent his attempt to even communicate with the main system.

Dilandu wrote:I think it isn't the main problem. The main problem is - what if the Rakurai communication system is simply locked on a 100-number code? Or even - locked on personality scan of the Langhorne or someone else? It's logical enough to be done almost for sure. And any "Ranking Surviving Officer" wouldn't be able to do anuthing with that, because the simple lock in the communication system just prevent his attempt to even communicate with the main system.

The OBS was modified with added defenses after Langhorne's death. That strongly suggests a chain of command and continued communications.

Weird Harold wrote:

Dilandu wrote:I think it isn't the main problem. The main problem is - what if the Rakurai communication system is simply locked on a 100-number code? Or even - locked on personality scan of the Langhorne or someone else? It's logical enough to be done almost for sure. And any "Ranking Surviving Officer" wouldn't be able to do anuthing with that, because the simple lock in the communication system just prevent his attempt to even communicate with the main system.

The OBS was modified with added defenses after Langhorne's death. That strongly suggests a chain of command and continued communications.

The added defenses aren't part of the OBS; they're a swarm of defense platforms around the OBS. Their existence doesn't suggest anything about anyone's ability to control the OBS. They could even have been set up by someone who couldn't control the OBS - if you have to be on the platform to fire it, denying those who could control it access to the platform would be a viable defense against the OBS.

We really don't know anything about the nature of the OBS beyond its gross physical abilities. There is no reason to think that it would recognize anyone still alive as having the authority to give it orders. We don't know that whatever is in the Temple's basement includes a control station for the OBS. We don't know if the OBS will fire on any Proscriptions-violating technology beyond that which the good guys have already deployed. We don't even know if the OBS is still functional! Given all that we don't know, to assert that there is "a chain of command and continued communications" seems to me to be going beyond reasonable speculation.

Dilandu wrote:

So I don't think the craters are necessarily hugely deep - it was probably a huge number of quite small impactors.

Hm, the impact on the oceans still should be pretty bad. A large amount of continental material would be thrown in the Sea of Justice and Parker Sea. The ocean water would be contaminated with dust, continental organic... It may not be the great extinction scenario, but it may impact planetary ecology greatly.

There will be some effect... but gigaton impacts on Earth are not THAT rare over geological time.

The dinosaur killer impact was ~100 teratons. I don't think the OBS attack was anywhere near that scale.

It was likely hundreds of thousands or millions of small impactors, but the energy of each impact might have been fairly low (on the scale of such things).

Weird Harold wrote:
You're missing the "Ranking Surviving Officer" point. If anyone survived in the explicit chain of command, Nimue wouldn't have a hope of taking control. It is the emergency protocols that would take the chain of command outside of whatever explicit list the OBS was provided and then only if the TFN Officer could convince the OBS they were the Ranking Survivor.

Somehow I think Langhorne and those who survived the vest nuke probably cut out anyone -but- them or their descendants/heirs from being able to use the OBS. So a surviving TFN officer wouldn't be recognized. And if Langhorne kept the Federation view of PICAs not being real people, I seriously doubt a PICA of Nuimue(?) would be accepted as a legitimate TFN officer (almost 900 years has passed after all) and she isn't on the list of authorized people who can give commands to the OBS control computer.

Would be ironic and amusing that after spending so much effort in trying to take out the OBS, Merlin found out at the end of the series that he could on day one, ordered the OBS to stand down if he directly communicate with it. Assuming if someone had left the default military protocols intact on the OBS.

Brog wrote:Would be ironic and amusing that after spending so much effort in trying to take out the OBS, Merlin found out at the end of the series that he could on day one, ordered the OBS to stand down if he directly communicate with it. Assuming if someone had left the default military protocols intact on the OBS.

Really, i doubt that. After commodore Pei rebellion, the survivng Archangels should make some precautions, just in case the another military officer would "Fall". The most simple way is to disconnect the military computers on OBS platforms from the communication system, and make all communication to came throught some "filter" computer, which only function is to ask passwords.