(SPOILERS) Too worried about waking up Dad?

fallsfromtrees wrote:With regard to the suggestions that the OBS be attacked via flying space hamsters, or some such, do we know if Merlin even has the capability to get to deep space. I know that he has access to LSO (Low Safehold Orbit), but do we know that the OBS won't fire on anything that get more that 1 planetary radius from the planet. Given the nature of the Archangel's business, this would have allowed them to move easily around the planet, but would never allow anyone to leave it, even if Shan Wei has managed to lose one of the terraforming ships and left it in the asteroid belt.

I think that more than likely both the skimmers and the troop transport have at least limited deep space capacity.

Don

fallsfromtrees wrote:With regard to the suggestions that the OBS be attacked via flying space hamsters, or some such, do we know if Merlin even has the capability to get to deep space. I know that he has access to LSO (Low Safehold Orbit), but do we know that the OBS won't fire on anything that get more that 1 planetary radius from the planet. Given the nature of the Archangel's business, this would have allowed them to move easily around the planet, but would never allow anyone to leave it, even if Shan Wei has managed to lose one of the terraforming ships and left it in the asteroid belt.

I imagine that a lightly loaded assault shuttle might have at least some inter system capability. It's much harder to hit a mobile spaceship with a dumb projectile than an immobile planet especially when said spaceship can use the planet as a shield till it gets well away. There's no suggestion in the text that the OBS is remotely interested in or equipped to prevent things leaving the planet.

Randomiser wrote:
I imagine that a lightly loaded assault shuttle might have at least some inter system capability. It's much harder to hit a mobile spaceship with a dumb projectile than an immobile planet especially when said spaceship can use the planet as a shield till it gets well away. There's no suggestion in the text that the OBS is remotely interested in or equipped to prevent things leaving the planet.

There is no evidence that it is not, nor is there any evidence that the OBS can only throw dumb rocks.Presumably the SNARCs that it destroyed were capable of movement, so whatever took them out must be capable of handling moving objects. As far as using the planet as a shield, are you sure that the OBS doesn't have multiple platforms, one of which can cover any section of sky over the planet at any given time?

Had I been designing the system, I would certainly have tried to prevent anything from leaving the planet - defined as exceed one planetary radius from the planet, which still leaves lots of room for doing stuff in LSO.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Randomiser wrote:
I imagine that a lightly loaded assault shuttle might have at least some inter system capability. It's much harder to hit a mobile spaceship with a dumb projectile than an immobile planet especially when said spaceship can use the planet as a shield till it gets well away. There's no suggestion in the text that the OBS is remotely interested in or equipped to prevent things leaving the planet.

There is no evidence that it is not, nor is there any evidence that the OBS can only throw dumb rocks.Presumably the SNARCs that it destroyed were capable of movement, so whatever took them out must be capable of handling moving objects. As far as using the planet as a shield, are you sure that the OBS doesn't have multiple platforms, one of which can cover any section of sky over the planet at any given time?

Had I been designing the system, I would certainly have tried to prevent anything from leaving the planet - defined as exceed one planetary radius from the planet, which still leaves lots of room for doing stuff in LSO.

You are correct that it wasn't a dumb rock; the SNARC doing the investigation got nailed by a defense laser, IIRC...

also, it depends on what the cells( 6 of 'em, I do believe)were loaded with; just basic rock, or something more along the line of Forward's monoploium ( Ref: Dragon's Egg, by R. Forward. a rocking good read, if you haven't )

At any rate, if it's just your basic orbital trash rock, it'll take a while to reload.... but it's been a while since the last time it got fired, textev says last time was taking out the original site of the SSK. Lotsa time to top off.....

Please be careful about unmarked spoilers!

Caliban wrote:

Randomiser wrote:
I imagine that a lightly loaded assault shuttle might have at least some inter system capability. It's much harder to hit a mobile spaceship with a dumb projectile than an immobile planet especially when said spaceship can use the planet as a shield till it gets well away. There's no suggestion in the text that the OBS is remotely interested in or equipped to prevent things leaving the planet.

fallsfromtrees wrote:There is no evidence that it is not, nor is there any evidence that the OBS can only throw dumb rocks.Presumably the SNARCs that it destroyed were capable of movement, so whatever took them out must be capable of handling moving objects. As far as using the planet as a shield, are you sure that the OBS doesn't have multiple platforms, one of which can cover any section of sky over the planet at any given time?

Had I been designing the system, I would certainly have tried to prevent anything from leaving the planet - defined as exceed one planetary radius from the planet, which still leaves lots of room for doing stuff in LSO.

You are correct that it wasn't a dumb rock; the SNARC doing the investigation got nailed by a defense laser, IIRC...

also, it depends on what the cells( 6 of 'em, I do believe)were loaded with; just basic rock, or something more along the line of Forward's monoploium ( Ref: Dragon's Egg, by R. Forward. a rocking good read, if you haven't )

At any rate, if it's just your basic orbital trash rock, it'll take a while to reload.... but it's been a while since the last time it got fired, textev says last time was taking out the original site of the SSK. Lotsa time to top off.....

Reload time can't have been that bad. OAR says that Armageddon Reef (Alexandria enclave) was hit had least 7 times. If there were only 6 cells....

If the OBS is reloading then it must have robot spacecraft to go out to the asteroid zone and haul back material

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Randomiser wrote:
I imagine that a lightly loaded assault shuttle might have at least some inter system capability. It's much harder to hit a mobile spaceship with a dumb projectile than an immobile planet especially when said spaceship can use the planet as a shield till it gets well away. There's no suggestion in the text that the OBS is remotely interested in or equipped to prevent things leaving the planet.

There is no evidence that it is not, nor is there any evidence that the OBS can only throw dumb rocks.Presumably the SNARCs that it destroyed were capable of movement, so whatever took them out must be capable of handling moving objects. As far as using the planet as a shield, are you sure that the OBS doesn't have multiple platforms, one of which can cover any section of sky over the planet at any given time?

Had I been designing the system, I would certainly have tried to prevent anything from leaving the planet - defined as exceed one planetary radius from the planet, which still leaves lots of room for doing stuff in LSO.

Exactly, you are whistling things up out of no evidence whatever based on how you would have designed things if it were your story - but it isn't. Lasers that can shoot down craft that are getting too close are a very different thing from being able to do the same to craft that are a long way off. I don't have the first book to hand, but IIRC the OBS is described in a way that suggests there is just one system; OWL speaks of it as being at the centre of a sphere of detection and protection platforms. Langhorne certainly only built one to begin with; it was all he needed. His heirs may have added the protection, but they had no need to go to the expense of duplicating all that either. There is no textev it was ever designed or used as a tactical rather than a strategic weapon so quick response just wasn't required.

6L6 wrote:If the OBS is reloading then it must have robot spacecraft to go out to the asteroid zone and haul back material

Or it has a tender loaded with thousands of rocks, cut with mining lasers to appropriate sizes.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Reload time can't have been that bad. OAR says that Armageddon Reef (Alexandria enclave) was hit had least 7 times. If there were only 6 cells....

There are several problems with that statement. First, The text doesn't say that there are only 6 cells. It says that there are 6 cells loaded and ready to fire right now. Second, the entire system was modified sometime after the Angelic wars, so we don't know what changes have been made or what the system looked like before.