Nitpicking at A Rising Thunder...

Weird Harold wrote:Kevin's next sentence is probably true:

It's dangerous, completely outside their training, and any SLN officer who suggested it would likely be sent to some hell of a desk job.

It is almost certainly true for Battle Fleet, and probably true for Frontier Fleet, that close assault on a wormhole terminus is not something their lax training standards would make a simple matter of reading charts and whipping out an off-the-cuff Nav computation.

I'm not sure that Kevin's prediction of dire consequences for any SLN officer who suggested the tactic, but the RHN's overshoot of the Basilisk Terminus would likely look like pinpoint navigation by the SLN's demonstrated capabilities.

And if you overshoot in the wrong direction you hit the RZ on emergence and go *splat*.

And (as far as we know) the RZ doesn't have the same 20% 'error margin' that the hyper limit does (where in the outer 20% you don't get destroyed; you simply fail to exit hyperspace)

So it does seem an uncharacteristically risky approach for a SLN officer to push for; given what we've seen of them. (But there's probably at least a few, probably more junior, officers who would aggressively push for it as their best chance to quickly make an impact on Manticore. Guess we'll see if they manage to get their way)

kevinrs wrote:I'd have to say, SLN would be unlikely to even think of trying to transit in on top of the wormhole.

Relax wrote:Right, cuz the bad guys are all stupid and incompetent who can't even read a map for RZ distance of a wormhole termini.

Weird Harold wrote:Kevin's next sentence is probably true:

kevinrs wrote: It's dangerous, completely outside their training, and any SLN officer who suggested it would likely be sent to some hell of a desk job.

It is almost certainly true for Battle Fleet, and probably true for Frontier Fleet, that close assault on a wormhole terminus is not something their lax training standards would make a simple matter of reading charts and whipping out an off-the-cuff Nav computation.

I'm not sure that Kevin's prediction of dire consequences for any SLN officer who suggested the tactic, but the RHN's overshoot of the Basilisk Terminus would likely look like pinpoint navigation by the SLN's demonstrated capabilities.

The one example we've seen, they did substantially better than that: Filareta's fleet arrived 12 light-seconds outside the hyper limit. "Oh, Uruguay had been off slightly — [Filareta]'d wanted to shave the margin on the hyper limit even tighter".

Bill Woods wrote:The one example we've seen, they did substantially better than that: Filareta's fleet arrived 12 light-seconds outside the hyper limit. "Oh, Uruguay had been off slightly — [Filareta]'d wanted to shave the margin on the hyper limit even tighter".

12 light-seconds isn't bad. That's about 50% of SDM range.
But it's also 7 times energy range. So it's a long way from the kind of ambush some people are advocating here.


It'd take an SDM 131 seconds to cover that 3.6 million km (73% of their powered endurance time) to cover that distance. But crunching the numbers it looks like a Cataphract could do it in 87 seconds, with a substantially higher terminal velocity. 12 seconds on the 1st stage drive @95200g, then the full 75 seconds on the 2nd stage CM drive @98000g. Sub-90 seconds might be quick enough to overwhelm even a modern RMN light unit before it can get it's ECM and point-defense fully online. (Assuming you could locate and attack it nearly instantly)

Relax wrote:

kevinrs wrote:I'd have to say, SLN would be unlikely to even think of trying to transit in on top of the wormhole.

Right, cuz the bad guys are all stupid and incompetent who can't even read a map for RZ distance of a wormhole termini.

Do keep in mind that there is an organization that has spent at least decades making sure that the people in positions of power are as stupid and incompetent as possible. I am sure that some good fighters slipped through the cracks, but they will be few, far between, and probably subordinate to somebody else.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Bill Woods wrote:The one example we've seen, they did substantially better than that: Filareta's fleet arrived 12 light-seconds outside the hyper limit. "Oh, Uruguay had been off slightly — [Filareta]'d wanted to shave the margin on the hyper limit even tighter".

12 light-seconds isn't bad. That's about 50% of SDM range.
But it's also 7 times energy range. So it's a long way from the kind of ambush some people are advocating here.


It'd take an SDM 131 seconds to cover that 3.6 million km (73% of their powered endurance time) to cover that distance. But crunching the numbers it looks like a Cataphract could do it in 87 seconds, with a substantially higher terminal velocity. 12 seconds on the 1st stage drive @95200g, then the full 75 seconds on the 2nd stage CM drive @98000g. Sub-90 seconds might be quick enough to overwhelm even a modern RMN light unit before it can get it's ECM and point-defense fully online. (Assuming you could locate and attack it nearly instantly)

Nope. 87 seconds isn't close to enough.
In Honor of the Queen, Chapter 15, when the Masadan LACs in Yeltsin surprise Fearless, Apollo[/]i and [i]Troubadour on their return to Yeltsin from escorting the convoy onwards, the missile flight time is 45 seconds, and that's enough to bring up defenses on automatic, although Honor reflects that if they'd held fire another 20 seconds, there wouldn't have been time to bring up defenses.
Range was around a light second.

That's with prewar systems, 45 seconds was more than enough from entering what was believed to be a friendly system, with no hostiles in the area. Although, that was point defense lasers only for the first launch, PDLs and countermissiles for the second, and ECM wasn't bothered with.

I strongly suspect that Manticore has made improvements in the 20 years of mostly war since then, so the minimum response time should have dropped some.
I also firmly believe that any Manticoran ships sitting on a wormhole terminus are going to be at a higher level of readiness than Fearless and her consorts were in HotQ.




I can't check Shadow of Saganami right now, but when Hexapuma disables the Jessyk Combine freighter that's running guns over Montana, they use the point defense lasers to disable her in a hurry. Don't remember if numbers were used there, though.

crewdude48 wrote:Do keep in mind that there is an organization that has spent at least decades making sure that the people in positions of power are as stupid and incompetent as possible. I am sure that some good fighters slipped through the cracks, but they will be few, far between, and probably subordinate to somebody else.

You should look at the turnover of commanders in the USN between Dec 1 1941 and Dec 1 1943. Every time a military goes to war they find that a large percentage of the people who got placed in charge during peace are not the people who they need in charge during a war.

Kytheros wrote:I also firmly believe that any Manticoran ships sitting on a wormhole terminus are going to be at a higher level of readiness than Fearless and her consorts were in HotQ.

Really? For how many weeks or months?

kzt wrote:

Kytheros wrote:I also firmly believe that any Manticoran ships sitting on a wormhole terminus are going to be at a higher level of readiness than Fearless and her consorts were in HotQ.

Really? For how many weeks or months?

They're not going to be sitting there at a full combat alert level, of course, but they're not going to be sitting there in the firm knowledge that they're in friendly - nearly allied even - space and that there are no potential hostiles around and no-one is going to dare shoot at them, and that they're in a time of peace.

They are going to be sitting there fully aware that they're at war, they are not in a friendly and secure system, that any close transits are potential - probable, even - hostiles, and they also have the institutional experience of years of war with a motivated peer/near-peer opponent.


I think that in HotQ, they were at about the lowest state of combat readiness a warship in motion is ever at.
I also think that it's fairly safe to say that the warships Manticore pickets wormhole termini with will be at a higher state of combat readiness/alert than that.

Jonathan_S wrote:And if you overshoot in the wrong direction you hit the RZ on emergence and go *splat*.

And (as far as we know) the RZ doesn't have the same 20% 'error margin' that the hyper limit does (where in the outer 20% you don't get destroyed; you simply fail to exit hyperspace)

Hmm I believe in A Rising Thunder, I have to go back and reread this one, but at Zunkers? 8 BC's translated WAY out, and the RMN officer on watch, was contemplating that this was them putting "a toe in" instead of translating within SDM range and getting down to it.

Do we not have merchant ships back in HotQ translating within the hyperlimit? In A rising Thunder, was it not stated that the SLN COULD have translated much closer to the hyperlimit and put Sphinx in their missile range if they had wanted to, but wanted extra time to allow their generators time to recharge?

Believe I am forgetting other references to distance to Hyperlimit translations and RZs, but these are the ones off the top of my head.

Relax wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:And if you overshoot in the wrong direction you hit the RZ on emergence and go *splat*.

And (as far as we know) the RZ doesn't have the same 20% 'error margin' that the hyper limit does (where in the outer 20% you don't get destroyed; you simply fail to exit hyperspace)

Relax wrote:Hmm I believe in A Rising Thunder, I have to go back and reread this one, but at Zunkers? 8 BC's translated WAY out, and the RMN officer on watch, was contemplating that this was them putting "a toe in" instead of translating within SDM range and getting down to it.

They came in "the better part of fifty million kilometers [~150 light-seconds] from the terminus. That represented either pretty poor astrogation or else a deliberate decision". The intention was to break the blockade by daring the Manties to shoot first, not to do so themselves.

Relax wrote: Do we not have merchant ships back in HotQ translating within the hyperlimit? In A rising Thunder, was it not stated that the SLN COULD have translated much closer to the hyperlimit and put Sphinx in their missile range if they had wanted to, but wanted extra time to allow their generators time to recharge?

No, they'd tried to come in closer. They did have extended-range missiles, but legally you can't just shoot missiles toward an inhabited planet; you have to be in at least high orbit around it.