Immensity of the universe... including the honorverse

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Valid points, but orbital velocity of earth is not super relevant to my thinking, detection and interception in-time is.
Sensors out at the hyper limit have to be on a MUCH bigger circumference, in fact, it's closer to a billion KM for SOL, so coming in above hi/lo, etc. forces a much bigger sensor deployment, for early detection at all. For example, if the LACS in the second attack in Operation Buttercup had ghosted in above the ecliptic, I don't think they would have had to worry about detection by the destroyer screen at all, except in capital/super-nodal worlds. I think...

I see. My counter is that most systems do in fact have those sensors off the ecliptic as well as along the ecliptic. Perhaps not as many, so they may not get as good a read on exactly what the incoming ships look like, but enough.

Makes sense, I arrive at a good understanding, I think. Against a system with inferior defenses such as Monica (Khumalo's arrival: 12 SLN battle cruisers couldn't cover the whole system as a fighting force against even a Samothrace + screen), or where you have a pretty good idea that the sensory coverage isn't completed yet, off the ecliptic or polar, where the 'net is completed, least time unless you've got a scouting look which lets you pull off something like the LAC attack in Ashes of Victory. We good?

cthia wrote:

SWM wrote:Yeah, it's easy to forget the scale of things. I often have to remind folks "Space is big. Really big."

One trivial correction: maximum graser range against a sidewall is about 1.5 times the distance of the earth to the moon, and the range at which it will just blow through the sidewall is less. But your point stands. It is amazing to sit back and really think about the scale sometimes! Just think about how much bigger a superdreadnought is than an aircraft carrier. Then stand on an aircraft carrier.

Never stood on an aircraft carrier. But a couple of old battleships served the same purpose.

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

Intrepid is in New York
Hornet is in Alameda
Midway is in San Diego
Lady Lex (Lexington) is in Corpus Cristi

Granted these are older Essex / Hancock class (plus Midway) but they are open for visitors.

The newer carriers are in Bremerton, San Diego and Norfolk.

Stop by the Museum Ships to get an idea for size.

-- Stewart

JeffEngel wrote:It depends on how much value you can get out of entering the system in an area of less likely detection and examination, versus bother in astrogation and wear on parts. Honor was running point for a convoy - bringing them in all together in an exotic spot may have involved too much risk of scatter. And when the Manticoran offensive was stalled precisely because of maintenance woes, putting more strain on the systems of fleet train units in a presumably secure system just to keep from being quite so likely to be detected quite so easily by an enemy that was not expected to be there... would seem to be a strained suggestion from the armchair.

Khumalo, by contrast, had a confusing and sticky situation to figure out in Monica. A scattered task force would not have been all that much of a problem - heck, the spread may have been better for flinging out recon drones! Time to see what was up and communicate with Terekhov was important to him there, much more than maintenance implications.

Also, Honor was taking fairly routine precautions when moving between systems that really were expected to stay in RMN hands.

If she'd been really paranoid the convoy wouldn't have dropped out of hyper unless the scout came back and told them it was safe. Otherwise they'd divert either to the next system, or to a nearby random bit of deep space to wait for a bit before aborting.

Dropping in far enough from the least distance route to the planet to make a difference (off the ecliptic and/or well around the limit from the planet) adds time to the in-system transit, making the entire convoy route even longer.

Honor was willing to run the low risk the destruction of her scout ship against the time saved in the likelihood that the system really was in safe hands. (I have issues with how she actually implemented that, but the general idea of not treating every system along the convoy route as a probable trap makes sense. They almost never are)

Khumalo knew that there likely was something very bad at Monica, and his primary concern was that his ships not drop out together in the most likely location. Also the risks were different. When Honor got captured the Peeps weren't even confirmed to have pods (though Honor suspected it), but nobody had MDMs in service. So if you varied your arrival location even a few million km the enemy needed a lot of ships and pods to be likely to engage and overwhelm you quickly. In contrast Khumalo had to worry that there was an, unlikely, chance he was facing someone with access to MDM (or at least ERM) pods. You need far fewer of those to lay a hyperlimit ambush. So it makes sense to vary your approach position by far more, in order to lower the risk of popping out in the gunsites of a shoal of MDM pods.