Saganami Island lessons: the Battle of Manticore

Relax wrote:They are sending Video of all things via FTL, and yet cannot send simple position vector data... Ug, I'll try not to barf over the pathetic absurdity of the "science".

Missiles don't target by position/vector data. They do the following;


1) Get as many position/vector changes as possible for the enemy target, preferably all of them that sensors can see while the enemy is dodging at rates faster than any human cound think under variable acceleration shifting at less than hundredths of a second.

2) Analyze enemy course and find patterns in it.

3) Since true random numbers don't exist, guess at what random number generators the enemy computers are using to generate dodge patters.

4) Once enemy dodge patterns are known, compare with current enemy dodging as seen via close-range gravitic sensors.

5) Fire at enemy future position so that by the time your laser beam has taken 1/2 second to reach enemy, the enemy, after moving tens of thousands of kilometers and after a hundred minor acceleration changes, arrives at the point you decided to fire.





The info the missile needs is not a simple vector; it is the entire pattern the enemy computer is using to dodge so it can compare it to the real-time data that the base ship does not have.

Belial666 wrote:

Relax wrote:They are sending Video of all things via FTL, and yet cannot send simple position vector data... Ug, I'll try not to barf over the pathetic absurdity of the "science".

Missiles don't target by position/vector data. They do the following;


1) Get as many position/vector changes as possible for the enemy target, preferably all of them that sensors can see while the enemy is dodging at rates faster than any human cound think under variable acceleration shifting at less than hundredths of a second.

2) Analyze enemy course and find patterns in it.

3) Since true random numbers don't exist, guess at what random number generators the enemy computers are using to generate dodge patters.

4) Once enemy dodge patterns are known, compare with current enemy dodging as seen via close-range gravitic sensors.

5) Fire at enemy future position so that by the time your laser beam has taken 1/2 second to reach enemy, the enemy, after moving tens of thousands of kilometers and after a hundred minor acceleration changes, arrives at the point you decided to fire.





The info the missile needs is not a simple vector; it is the entire pattern the enemy computer is using to dodge so it can compare it to the real-time data that the base ship does not have.

True random numbers do exist, and there are technical means not involving computers for generating them. As you correctly note, computers only generate pseudorandom numbers. A moderately competently written program not like the one Abigail faced will not have a repetition period short enough to show a pattern.

If realistic pseudo-randomness was inserted into aiming/dodging in the series, the attacker would no longer simply have to predict a future position but to actually "checkmate" the dodger.

I.e. generate not only get a future hit but enough future hits that any dodging possible for the target would still put him in a position that was a hit.



And that would make all the gritty, unpredictable sci-fi attack destriptions and the ECM/ECCM games that we love so much kinda useless. Can't have that, can we?

RE: Randomness, etc.: I don't think it's "true randomness" that the computers are generating for ship movement inside the wedge. While all of the RMN ships have FTL, they don't all have the computational bandwidth required for the 23-E. RFC's characters have repeatedly emphasized that part of what makes the SD- series such a power proposition is their computational ability.

Against each other, Manticore and Haven's ships are now designed to survive in missile storms previously unimaginable, a combination of layered countermissile and point defense cluster fire. Offensively, it's a truly difficult job, because of the nature of an impermeable globe with only limited attack angles because of the wedge/sidewall geometry, and the "fireball in space" (contact nukes) can't get close enough to do a dang thing in current space navies --> because of the computational power on the ships.

What that means in the bigger globe of the "laser head missile"'s 30Km stand off range, taking out a target at XC (not .0XC) with a 1km countermissile wedge isn't a simple proposition: a jink of a fraction of a percent of angle generates a miss, Laser cluster's, even a tighter angle. Commensurately difficult in the offensive arena, missiles depends on the final attack manuevers and effective pen-aids to evade or blind those same defenses. And at .7C, they have to do so [including a planned .0000X aim point] in the right microsecond while not getting shot out of space themselves.

So in non-tech/military terms, in AAC, Theisman says the following: "Eloise, guided by an enemy SD-'s supercomputer capacity, not enough of those missiles miss or are countered to let our ships survive. They're updating the attack profiles 64x faster than our SD's supercomputers can generate effective defenses". Not: "Eloise, we're toast. Because using FTL, one of LACS can guide in a set of 9-27 missiles from maximum range and hit us every time."

SharkHunter wrote:RE: Randomness, etc.: I don't think it's "true randomness" that the computers are generating for ship movement inside the wedge. While all of the RMN ships have FTL, they don't all have the computational bandwidth required for the 23-E. RFC's characters have repeatedly emphasized that part of what makes the SD- series such a power proposition is their computational ability.

Bit of a tangent, but it occurs to me that the modern fortresses, as even bigger propositions, are that much more dangerous on that basis as well. And with Apollo, system defense pods, and 4 drive system defense missiles, if you can afford to control missiles from the range of some fortress, you can have that computational power at hand for the defense anywhere in the system.

If trading off that range is too painful, some systems and some states will be able to hand-off control to one of several fortresses in the system. Manticore will have again before too terribly long such fortresses over Manticore, Sphinx and (for Manticore-B) Gryphon, as well as Junction forts. (And in the future, they may well want one or two in the Unicorn Belt, just to give -B a more flexible defense, but that's looking far ahead.)

Relax wrote:Actually, all Manticoran ships, including LAC's talk FTL. Now the bandwidth available, is another matter entirely. At minimum they have enough FTL bandwidth for Bi-directional video even in LAC's.

In this case, RFC has chosen to NOT allow FTL speaking ships to use the limited bandwidth available to talk to the Apollo birds.

Essentially, someone(single person, maybe upwards of 3 people) has not written a hand shake program with a do-or-die war on, a population of 4 Billion people, allowing smaller ships to use Apollo birds without Keyholes.

They are sending Video of all things via FTL, and yet cannot send simple position vector data... Ug, I'll try not to barf over the pathetic absurdity of the "science".

To be semi fair they're sending video (over unspecified distances) to ships (or hermes bouys) that have much larger and more sensitive grav sensors that what you could shoehorn into the aft end of even an oversized MDM.

I suspect that the Apollo control birds are a little "deaf" compared to any other FTL receiver we've seen. And one advantage the Keyhole II has is that it's well clear of the ship's wedge (instead of fluctuating the ships wedge) so it's probably a less "noisy" signal to read.


So it theoretically might be more that just nobody bothering to write a hand shake protocol.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:To be semi fair they're sending video (over unspecified distances) to ships (or hermes bouys) that have much larger and more sensitive grav sensors that what you could shoehorn into the aft end of even an oversized MDM.

Thought the MDM was oversized for two reasons, generating the return grav pulses back to the "motherships" requires way bigger impellers plus it's carrying a decent size AI-node that acts as a forward controller for it's mates.

So I think it's still a mothership computational bandwidth problem, not a transmit speed problem, aka for 99.9% of the missile's trajectory, the FTL link is unused except to send telemetry back to the warship. I'd think that for the first six minutes or more, that reception wise, the missile's reception and timing would be an every few seconds "yeah we got your warship generated course correction, angling to keep the b-tards in my pod's missiles range..."

It's the last million or so KM -- which is only between 15 and twenty seconds, the FTL links might get REAL busy, because that's when the 65X speed counts most. Then the order is simply something like "Agincourt AQ-17" like at Spindle, and maybe a few trailer pods show which attacked ships need further attention from a follow on salvo currently en-route.

Jonathan_S wrote:

To be semi fair they're sending video (over unspecified distances) to ships (or hermes bouys) that have much larger and more sensitive grav sensors that what you could shoehorn into the aft end of even an oversized MDM.

I suspect that the Apollo control birds are a little "deaf" compared to any other FTL receiver we've seen. And one advantage the Keyhole II has is that it's well clear of the ship's wedge (instead of fluctuating the ships wedge) so it's probably a less "noisy" signal to read.
[/quote]

Keyholes have impellers and Wedges.

So, BOINK.

Found a nugget useful for our advanced tactical students (this is post war, after all) which is that Honor, etc. had figured out how to keep the LACs much closer to the formations they are guarding, almost interspersed inside them, sorta like plugging the holes in a dike with progressively smaller stones.

Given that "Filereta's folly" threw about 51K missiles (not aimed well) and the initial missile storms from 5th and 2nd Fleet were both about 10-12K missiles each, let's assume that gives 3rd Fleet a longer survival time in the furball. I think others are right and 3rd Fleet goes full guns on 2nd Fleet, while maneuvering back towards the hyper limit simply to survive, and tells McKeon to rip as many of those A-- holes behind us (5th fleet) a new one as you can hit effectively in every volley", knowing that 8th Fleet is coming hard to save the home planets.

I'm not saying that 3rd Fleet survives intact, by the way, just that it might not have been shredded as badly. Thoughts?

wastedfly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:

To be semi fair they're sending video (over unspecified distances) to ships (or hermes bouys) that have much larger and more sensitive grav sensors that what you could shoehorn into the aft end of even an oversized MDM.

I suspect that the Apollo control birds are a little "deaf" compared to any other FTL receiver we've seen. And one advantage the Keyhole II has is that it's well clear of the ship's wedge (instead of fluctuating the ships wedge) so it's probably a less "noisy" signal to read.

Keyholes have impellers and Wedges.

So, BOINK.[/quote]

When did Keyhole platforms get impellers and wedges?

dreamrider