Snoop ships... vs. the MA.

Zakharra wrote:Another thing to consider is that with Mesa under possible siege and the MAlign pulling in its horns, the Manpower Inc is effectively dead and any ships they run/use are no longer useful by the MAlign. So tracking those ships isn't going to be particularly useful to try and find the MAlign's hideout. Given that they know the SEM/GA is looking for them, as well as the AE, the MAlign isn't going to take any chances on leaving a trail that could lead back to their hidden world. At the most, the spy ships the OP is talking about would pick up the scattered remnants of Mesa Manpower's shipments.

[spoiler alert!] Mesa's not under siege at the end of Cauldron of Ghosts, its basically under new management, with the MA bugged out. Not a whole lot of people in the SL believe that the Alignment even exists. I think Manpower is more important as camouflage than ever before; otherwise it validates those "neo-barb wild stories".

Snoop wise, these ships are basically interstellar double agents, say they take a couple "dirty" cargos (but not slaves) offer to take spies back to the confederacy so those individuals can "disappear" into the woodwork inside Haven Sector space -- while of course, monitoring those same spies to the nth degree. Think, Lt. Manson in Torch of Freedom, for example. Knowing who the grifters are talking to tells you who the other grifters are and who is shopping for what info, etc.

Or the snoop ships ALSO manage to lose a few crew members (GA sector agents) on planet X to "negotiate with the underworld folks to bring cargo Y the next time our big freighter comes on by..." that are also monitoring the snoop satellites, etc. that the ship left behind, etc.

Plus the Alignment has to get say 30K people from point A (Mesa) to points T, U, and V via intermediate points, and boy don't alot of those folks look too much alike (which would be a result of genetic super-selection). Where do those folks come from? well their ship's registry is point X but came from point Y, buy me a ticket on that ship, etc.

Crown Loyalist wrote:The best way to gather intelligence using freighters isn't to repurpose the freighters for intelligence work, it's to give the Manticoran freighter captains and crew ways to report on what they see. A freighter that's actively spying is going to be a bad freighter and thus easy to spot. A freighter which is actively a freighter and passively spying is going to be a much more reliable source of intelligence - and you'll have a lot, lot more of them.

(As I understand, this is already a function the Manticoran freighter fleet serves, intentionally or not.)

--Spoiler alert--
Problem is that as of A Rising Thunder, the Manticoran freighter fleet has been withdrawn from Solarian space (and will likely be running alot more trade in and out of Silesia, Talbott, and the Republic of Haven). Returning Manticoran Freighters to SL space would be like waving a red flag to say, "hey, look at us, we've probably got something rotten in mind" because we're evil Mantie neobarbs!"

SharkHunter wrote:

Crown Loyalist wrote:The best way to gather intelligence using freighters isn't to repurpose the freighters for intelligence work, it's to give the Manticoran freighter captains and crew ways to report on what they see. A freighter that's actively spying is going to be a bad freighter and thus easy to spot. A freighter which is actively a freighter and passively spying is going to be a much more reliable source of intelligence - and you'll have a lot, lot more of them.

(As I understand, this is already a function the Manticoran freighter fleet serves, intentionally or not.)

--Spoiler alert--
Problem is that as of A Rising Thunder, the Manticoran freighter fleet has been withdrawn from Solarian space (and will likely be running alot more trade in and out of Silesia, Talbott, and the Republic of Haven). Returning Manticoran Freighters to SL space would be like waving a red flag to say, "hey, look at us, we've probably got something rotten in mind" because we're evil Mantie neobarbs!"

Yes, they have been withdrawn from Sollie space, but Sollie space is about to get seriously downsized, and there is no textev that Manticore freighters will not be working former Sollie space (like the Madras sector). Since it is probable that the MAlign has gone to ground outside of Sollie core space, this might actually work.

Well, if the Alignment has "gone to ground" in Darius (as many of us believe), your fishing trip is only going to catch pirates, bad Sollie spies, and nefarious corporate types, not the Alignment.

The Alignment already has enough ships and contacts that it trusts. It doesn't need to use any ne'er-do-well tramp freighters that happen to come by batting their eyelashes.

SWM wrote:Well, if the Alignment has "gone to ground" in Darius (as many of us believe), your fishing trip is only going to catch pirates, bad Sollie spies, and nefarious corporate types, not the Alignment.

The Alignment already has enough ships and contacts that it trusts. It doesn't need to use any ne'er-do-well tramp freighters that happen to come by batting their eyelashes.

Agree. The only people you might be able to pick up are Zach and Gail, who may (or may not) be looking for a ride to Darius.

SharkHunter wrote:

Crown Loyalist wrote:The best way to gather intelligence using freighters isn't to repurpose the freighters for intelligence work, it's to give the Manticoran freighter captains and crew ways to report on what they see. A freighter that's actively spying is going to be a bad freighter and thus easy to spot. A freighter which is actively a freighter and passively spying is going to be a much more reliable source of intelligence - and you'll have a lot, lot more of them.

(As I understand, this is already a function the Manticoran freighter fleet serves, intentionally or not.)

--Spoiler alert--
Problem is that as of A Rising Thunder, the Manticoran freighter fleet has been withdrawn from Solarian space (and will likely be running alot more trade in and out of Silesia, Talbott, and the Republic of Haven). Returning Manticoran Freighters to SL space would be like waving a red flag to say, "hey, look at us, we've probably got something rotten in mind" because we're evil Mantie neobarbs!"

--------------

Keep in mind that one of the best anti-piracy "freighters" we have seen was the Silesian Auxilliary "Pirate's Bane", an over the hill (by appearances) x-Andie Collier owned and operated by Thomas Bachfisch. (War of Honor)

But the best weapon of any stealth craft is not that it cannot be seen, but rather that it is not NOTICED. It needs to fade into the normal background or any area it operates in.

Any freighter or other merchant squawking a Talbott area, Silesian, Manty or Havenite transponder is automatically out of place.

Best bet is a "non-aligned" freighter with well-hidden passive sensors, or a news-agency courier boat with an enhanced passive sensor suite.

-- Stewart

SWM wrote:Well, if the Alignment has "gone to ground" in Darius (as many of us believe), your fishing trip is only going to catch pirates, bad Sollie spies, and nefarious corporate types, not the Alignment.

The Alignment already has enough ships and contacts that it trusts. It doesn't need to use any ne'er-do-well tramp freighters that happen to come by batting their eyelashes.

Agreed on catching "the Alignment", plus they've got their streak ships, but then again, I don't think every Houdini ship went direct to Darius "do not pass go do not collect $200", if you catch my drift. They've still go to get to Darius -- if that's the destination, without leading the RMN to them, aka in a more hidden manner. They also have to do business in their "disrupt the galaxy plans" using proxies like Manpower, etc. to do useful nasty-ish things. Plus we're not talking about tramp freighters if they are Silesian mid-line "pseudo pirates" or "old armed mearchants" like the Ad Astras, whose cover is that the heat is too hot in their former hunting grounds.

One ship wouldn't likely hit the gold mine right off, and it's clues that we're looking for, and any number of things can ultimately lead to MA locations or intel, which -- if nothing else, would begin to narrow the search for until the GA starts to close on the .6% of known worlds (12 out of 1800+) which are MA / RF worlds.

Conversely, neither the MA nor the Solarian League has much spy penetration into the GA at present, so getting a heavier dose of their own intel assets "into the Haven Sector" would be a tempting proposition, no? with GA and BSC agents well placed to follow those assets to track the fleas back to the proverbial dogs.

Generally they are going to be called...destroyers,

...and they will come from...destroyer flotillas.

Remember that space is very, very big, and the stealth systems of the modern navies are very, very good, and they don't need to get any closer than Ghost Rider launch range.

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:Generally they are going to be called...destroyers,

...and they will come from...destroyer flotillas.

Remember that space is very, very big, and the stealth systems of the modern navies are very, very good, and they don't need to get any closer than Ghost Rider launch range.

dreamrider

The fly in that particular ointment is that neither ghost-rider nor destroyers can get useful on-the-ground intelligence, or Zilwicki would have gone back to Manticore and asked for a ride on a Roland to get to Mesa. There's also no disinformation or counter-information in the destroyer's arsenal either. Offensively, think back to "pre-war" when the Manties spoofed Parnell into attacking Yeltsin, or got McQueen out of position with bad intel based on force estimations.

Makes me think that or bigger snoop-ships would likely need to have courier boats in some of their cargo-bays, however. I think that the destroyer/recon units get called in pretty darn quick on a hot lead though.

SharkHunter wrote:

SWM wrote:Well, if the Alignment has "gone to ground" in Darius (as many of us believe), your fishing trip is only going to catch pirates, bad Sollie spies, and nefarious corporate types, not the Alignment.

The Alignment already has enough ships and contacts that it trusts. It doesn't need to use any ne'er-do-well tramp freighters that happen to come by batting their eyelashes.

Agreed on catching "the Alignment", plus they've got their streak ships, but then again, I don't think every Houdini ship went direct to Darius "do not pass go do not collect $200", if you catch my drift. They've still go to get to Darius -- if that's the destination, without leading the RMN to them, aka in a more hidden manner. They also have to do business in their "disrupt the galaxy plans" using proxies like Manpower, etc. to do useful nasty-ish things. Plus we're not talking about tramp freighters if they are Silesian mid-line "pseudo pirates" or "old armed mearchants" like the Ad Astras, whose cover is that the heat is too hot in their former hunting grounds.

One ship wouldn't likely hit the gold mine right off, and it's clues that we're looking for, and any number of things can ultimately lead to MA locations or intel, which -- if nothing else, would begin to narrow the search for until the GA starts to close on the .6% of known worlds (12 out of 1800+) which are MA / RF worlds.

Conversely, neither the MA nor the Solarian League has much spy penetration into the GA at present, so getting a heavier dose of their own intel assets "into the Haven Sector" would be a tempting proposition, no? with GA and BSC agents well placed to follow those assets to track the fleas back to the proverbial dogs.

I don't think that ANY Houdini ship (from Mesa) went direct to Darius, or even direct to a place they could rendezvous with a ride to Darius. We've actually been shown a pretty detailed example of the kind of routing that Houdini extractions used, and that example had 2-3 cutouts/transport changes BEFORE we saw it terminated, and it was pretty clear that the transporting ships that were 'interrupted' leaving Balescu Station were not the last leg transportation.

(Does it occur to anyone else that it would be very unhealthy to be the crew of the Jessyk/slaver/tramp ship that was the actual planned next-to-last leg for a Houdini cell? Because, you know, hyperspace accidents happen all the time, and dead men carry no tales - or rendezvous coordinates or ship descriptions, etc. The Houdini extraction organization killed tens or hundreds of thousands of Mesan citizens including family members of deep onion members, just to set up some of the planet departure cover stories. Heck, they offed a selection of their own operatives that were considered 'no further use'. What's a hundred or so tramp spaceship crews, maybe a few slaves in cargo, to put an untraceable cutout on the exit route?)