BobfromSydney wrote:JeffEngel wrote:
Bolthole boffins may be able to help those sensors, and work out something to pick up spider drive usage too. There may be some application for dedicated recon drone tender destroyers to check out those footprints - not built to fight much of anything, but to be an economical platform you can build and maintain in bulk to check out those footprints ASAP and flood the suspect area with recon drones. (I'd call it a frigate if not for fear of bringing the wrath of RFC down.But really, all the unit needs to be is a courier boat built up to support a load of drones and the gear to monitor and control them. If someone kills it, they've given up the stealth approach.)
If you have a suspect footprint, you could have some idea where a ballistic attack is coming from, and that could let you deploy mobile sensor platforms along that route to detect it. You could also deploy tugs or similar ships between that threat and likely targets - if you can put it in the right place, the impeller wedge will scotch any attack.
I totally disagree about that. If you send a gift-wrapped package of the latest ghost rider technology out of immediate support range of the rest of the fleet it is just asking to get bush-whacked. Someone will make an imprint, wait for the 'frigate' or 'destroyer' to turn up, then nail it and vacuum up the debris. Goodbye tech edge. The cavalry will show up a few hours later and find an empty battlefield.
If you are going to chase hyper imprints a long way out-system then you MUST send a force that is capable of self defence and mutual support.
Suggested forces:
A) CLAC + 1 CRU-RON
(CLAC dumps LACs and goes back into hyper. Comes back for pickup only after all-clear from a cruiser)
B) BATCRU-DIV + 1 DD-FLOT
Both suggested forces have a good balance of combat power and 'search' power.
You're flinging that out at every thing that is almost certainly a sensor ghost? If you have the resources to do that, well, I think maybe the rest of the universe has more to fear from you than the other way around. The idea here is to pounce on things that you'd ordinarily, and with excellent reason, write off as artifacts of excess possible pattern recognition or sensor glitches, if not for the stakes involved.
And if you are putting that much force out there, in addition to the sheer, astronomical waste of it and resources tied up chasing (almost certain) shadows, you're putting that much force out there where it could be ambushed by somewhat larger forces and nickle-and-dime your defenses away. The tiny drone tender works as a tripwire, in addition to a plain sensor platform - its disappearance definitively indicates hostile action, for minimal loss. Tough on the crews, granted, but tough on ten people is tough on a lot fewer than tough on a few hundred is, and the ten people are a lot smaller prize for the enemy than the few hundred.
Ghost Rider debris seems to be built with a lot of effort paid to making it useless. I figure if someone's that interested in getting some, conventional espionage will repay a lot better than blowing it up and sifting through the molecules before the now completely alerted system defenders show up.