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New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat

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New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat
Post by Laenole   » Sun Jan 17, 2016 7:27 pm

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Gbaba Evaluation Committee
Tellesburg, Charis, August 2, New Terran Federation Year 2

Because of the tragic loss of Merlin, Nimue, and Owl in the closing actions of the Great War, limited data on the Gbaba and the old Terran Federation is available. While the urgent search for more old data stores continues, this document presents an initial analysis.

Known data at this time:
- Gbaba destruction of an alien race discovered 10 years before the destruction of Crestwell
- Crestwell located 50 light years from Sol and the newest and furthest human colony. It was probably founded before the finding of the destroyed alien race.
- Human interstellar colonization is estimated at 250 years.
- Crestwell attacked by a large fleet with no prior in system recon by the Gbaba.
- Initial course of the war involved the loss of 3 human major worlds (of 14), followed by a counterattack that took 6 Gbaba worlds.
- Next phase started with a massive fleet showing up and driving back to their major words. The Gbaba then besieged all of these.
- One attempted colony fleet made it past the Gbaba before Project Arc. It was destroyed within 10 years and warned that the Gbaba tracked their transmissions.
- The time from the fall of Crestwell to the final battle of Task Force 1 of Operation Ark was 43 years.
- Against the poor tactics of the Gbaba, human fleets could often handle 3 to 4 times their numbers.
- Gbaba ships appeared to be unchanged in 2,000 years and had slightly superior equipment. Their ships are generally 15% faster to their Terran counterparts.
- The Gbaba may have been able to track at least the initial direction of hyperspace travel of Terran ships because they were able to vector in on Terran fleets uncomfortably quickly.
- Operation Ark flew around 10 years from Sol. If detected it would have fled another 10.

Since we are currently ignorant of many basic data on the Gbaba-Terran war, we used the above data plus the following astronomical data to come to some assumptions on ship performance.
- Sol is around 27,000 ly from the center of a Galaxy that is 160,000 ly in diameter by 2,000 ly thick. There is a central bulge of around 10,000 ly in diameter.
- The density of stars is around 0.035 stars per cubic light year with an average of 6.59 ly between stars in the general neighborhood.
- 90% of all stars are main sequence. 42% of main sequence stars are type G or K. Initial sky surveys predict 11% of all G and K stars should have 1 to 2 Earth mass planets in the water zone of their stars.

The following derived assumptions that apply to all scenarios should only be considered as approximate.

The extent of the Gbaba colonization is extrapolated from Terra’s expansion to 50 ly in 250 years. Since the oldest Gbaba starship found is 2,000 years old, we can assume the Gbaba have been interstellar for at least as long. We assumed both expansions started with 6 ly radius spherical volume (slightly less than average distance between stars). Since the TF expanded to 50 ly in 250 years, the Gbaba, if they expanded at a similar rate, would have expanded to 100 ly in 2,000 years and 115 in 3,000. The TF encompassed around 1,833 stars with 76 planets of 1 to 2 Earth mass in the habitable zone of G or K class stars. On these potential planets 14 major colonies were established. The figures for the Gbaba after 2,000 years would be 14,660 stars with 610 Terra-like planets containing 112 major colonies. If the Gbaba had been expanding for 3,000 years the numbers would be 21,991 stars, 914 habitable planets, and 168 major colonies.

Note that the above analysis involved linear expansion functions. Exponential functions were investigated and yielded results that the Gbaba dominated the entire galaxy. This seems unlikely given their xenophobia. It seems likely if they were present in the entire galaxy any life bearing worlds would be investigated on a routine basis making Earth’s technical development very umlikely.

The endurance of starships is an important factor. We know Terran ships were capable of at least 10 years of continuous operation since that is the time taken to reach Safehold. We also know that another ten years of continuous operation is at least possible because of the emergency continuation orders for Operation Ark.

The question comes up why Ark did not simply go 20 years initially since doubling the distance from Sol would increase the Gbaba potential search area by 8. Furthermore if the Gbaba had found Safehold during the initial terraforming period, it is likely that they would find Ark again after another 10 year trip. There is likely some limit in the 20 year trip range.

The limit seems unlikely to be biological. 20 years of trip would have represented 30 years of life for the crew and cryo-sleep for the passengers before settlement. 30 years of life represents only around 10% of the life of the crew who were picked to be young. Cryo-sleep had only been used by the Federation for 30 or 40 years but was theoretically good for 1.5 centuries.

This means that the limit is probably represents a limit of fuel or maintenance. Ships under drive would need to be continuously operating their systems. This represents wear that could lead to a critical system failure. This is a totally different situation than long term storage of equipment seen in Niume’’s cave or minimum use scenarios seen in the orbital bombardment systems. Gbaba ships that are 2,000 years old probably represent ships activated from llong term storage an/or routinely maintained ships.

Limited data on TFN ship speed(and by default Gbaba ship speed by being 15% faster) makes any precise estimation difficult. The only direct reference to ship speed is that Safehold is thousands of ly from Sol. Other than that speed estimate depends on the speed of the detection of the failed colony attempt. Destruction of the colony within 1+ years by thousands of ships homing on the colonies signal seems to work best for the colony traveling out 1 or two years at 100 to 200 ly/y. However, the data is so sparse that any ship speed up to 800 ly/y can be seen as reasonable.

Both Crestwell and the failed escape attempt were apparently destroyed without Gbaba scouts entering into the system. This especially makes sense if the Gbaba have detectors that can detect high tech emissions at 6 ly or more. At 6 ly detection range the number of scouting parties drops by 40% compared to actually having to enter a planetary system. In general time to search a number of stars drops with the square of the increase in detection range.

The pace of the combat between the TF and Gbaba suggests that the Gbaba worlds conquered by the TF were 0.5 to 1.5 ship years from Sol. Closer than 0.5 it is likely that the Gbaba worlds would have been detected by the TF. Further away, the war would probably have taken longer. The committee is far less confident in the upper limit as compared to the lower limit.

The destroyed alien civilization found 10 years before Crestwell had no indication of interstellar travel. No known TF ship is known to have been in contact with the Gbaba before Crestwell. Thus, it can be inferred that the Gbaba conduct periodic sweeps for high tech civilization. Without ship speed, endurance, and detection range no reliable estimation of the size and frequency of the sweeps can be made.

However, the Gbaba could sweep out to 11 ship years every 500 years with 250 ships that do 115 ly/y. At 920 ly/y the Gbaba would need 1,725 ships. The following assumptions were used for the calculations:
- Gbaba sphere is 114 ly in radius and ships leave form edge
- Gbaba use pairs of scouts for sweeps
- Each scout can detect high tech emissions at 10 ly
- The pairs travel for 22 years
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Re: New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat
Post by Laenole   » Sun Jan 17, 2016 7:28 pm

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Best Case evaluation of Gbaba Threat:

The Gbaba has only the ship types seen by the TF. They have no technology that the TF has not seen. They are technologically and tactically stagnant. Safehold is near the edge of the area through which they can routinely sweep in periods of 450 years or more periods.

The NTF response to this situation should include, but be not limited to:
- Careful industrial development to limit emissions levels to those below signal to noise ratio at 2 ly maximum.
- Upon development of the capability, setup a new Ark world as far distance from the Gbaba area as possible.
- Very careful, stealthy reconnaissance should be carried out to determine Gbaba capabilities.
- Consider abandoning Safehold to those who believe Langhorn might not be an Archangel but was at least a Prophet inspire by God about the evils of technology.
- Even if Safehold is not abandoned, all colonies should be developed near the new Ark world.
- Before initiating any offensive actions against the Gbaba, another new Ark world should be established and one or more heavily fortified naval base systems should be establish for logistic support.

Worst Case evaluations:

There are many scenarios more dangerous than the best case. The next worse case is considered highly likely by the committee.

This case assumes that the Gbaba possess a “hidden” fleet of ships with a minimum of advanced detection abilities. These abilities include the ability to at least detect hyperspace jumps at range and determine a general vector. These ships, dubbed survey ships, are the primary ships used to scout for new civilizations and once found keep track of their fleets. Survey ships probably also have a means to communicate to Fleet command ships. Survey ships never engage in combat situations or knowingly get close to alien ships.

The possible existence of these survey ships and their possible hyperspace detection capability mandates changes to the best case recommendations:
- FTL travel should be performed seldom if at all until the survey ship capabilities are established.
- Sublight deployment of recon drones to detect and evaluate the survey ships should be evaluated.
- Removal beyond Gbaba search area is mandatory if possible.

The worst case scenario considered by the committee is as follows:
The ships seen by the TF were merely the Gbaba’s militia. These ships are mass produced by one or more dedicated automated shipyard(s). The design is fixed to ease construction and maintenance demands. The crews are conscripts with implants loaded with operational and tactical data and methods. Thus, they respond poorly to new tactical situations.

Besides the militia and survey ship, there exists a much smaller regular navy of top of superior tech ships manned by professionals. The navy is deployed in enclaves around the galaxy to crush any new race.

Every enclave would include a fleet of survey ships for detection and a base for refit ting ships. The number of enclaves depends on the performance of the ships. Assuming 10 ly detection range and 22 year tours every 500 years, the Gbaba would need 171,000 ships with 115 ly/y speed in 1,893 enclaves. At 920 ly/y speed, only 21,500 ships would be needed in 34 enclaves.

The naval ships could be posted in naval bases in every other enclave. These bases would have support facilities and personnel along with naval families. Population and manufacturing centers might only be needed to be associated with every other naval base.

Obviously, higher fleet speeds for survey and naval ships would make this case more likely. The response to this scenario is very difficult. Establishment of a more distant new distant Ark world would cross the line into Naval territory and put it at unacceptable risk. All colonies would have to practice extreme emission controls. Any offensive would have to wait for very high tech development.
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Re: New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat
Post by Laenole   » Sun Jan 17, 2016 7:34 pm

Laenole
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You can take the above report as a document generated after the formation of a New Terran Federation. Or, you can take it as a report generated by Nahrmahn and Owl as an example of what could be lost by the unexpected loss of Merlin, Nimue and Owl when the "Archangels" return. Since the Archangels could possess high level military or AI the Pica and Owl could be vulnerable.

Laenole,
"all that glitters is not gold"
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Re: New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat
Post by Randomiser   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 11:17 am

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Backup, backup, backup!

If there isn't already a secure one somewhere, backing up OWL and the data stores ought to have been the first order of business. OWL is one of the obvious single points of failure of the whole project.
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Re: New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat
Post by JeffEngel   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 2:20 pm

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Randomiser wrote:Backup, backup, backup!

If there isn't already a secure one somewhere, backing up OWL and the data stores ought to have been the first order of business. OWL is one of the obvious single points of failure of the whole project.

Word. Even if a complete backup isn't possible, a simpler, artificially-barely-intelligent system with the same sheer library materials should be fairly easy, so that Safehold won't go back to the stars ignorant. A lot of printouts - the Alban Encyclopedia, if you will - would be still easier and adequate.
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Re: New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat
Post by DDHvi   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 3:39 pm

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Randomiser wrote:Backup, backup, backup!

If there isn't already a secure one somewhere, backing up OWL and the data stores ought to have been the first order of business. OWL is one of the obvious single points of failure of the whole project.


Yeah.

I wonder how many of the rest of us have had a storage failure and wished they had kept their backups up to date? :(

I like this thread. Could we maybe have some other ideas?

Updating my backup is now habitually the last daily task. I'm glad to say the backup process can be running in the background while the e-mail examination is being completed.

:geek:
Douglas Hvistendahl
Retired technical nerd
ddhviste@drtel.net

Dumb mistakes are very irritating.
Smart mistakes go on forever
Unless you test your assumptions!
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Re: New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat
Post by Dauntless   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 3:50 pm

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a backup is a good idea but tricky given the current world state. sure charis is kicking butt and slowly loosening the proscriptions but Nimue's cave was only doable because the terraformers were left alone.

would have been much harder if the nutters running the asylum had actually had someone keeping tabs on that part of the op, fortunately they were too busy brainwashing the colonists.

I suppose they could do something similar to the st khody's or the brotherhood but that will require resources which are being channelled into the war and people who can keep secrets and while the inner circle is growing it isn't big enough yet for something like that.
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Re: New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat
Post by n7axw   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 6:26 pm

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I would expect that it will take a long time for preparations will be sufficient to deal with the Gbaba. By the time they are ready for that a couple of centuries will have expired, even taking into account the tech which is supposedly on a par needed for the task at hand. Positing as this thread does that Nimue, Owl and Merlin are gone, it will take even longer.

Far more critical than the advance of tech will be building depth of industrial capacity and multiplying beyond one planet the baskets in which humanity's eggs are kept. Coming to grips with the Gbaba with a polity smaller than the Terran Federation itself would be pure folly no matter how good the tech is. In addition to that, planting humanity someplace far distant as a hole card should things go to the crapper should be done well before the confrontation to insure species survival.

To sum up, the current scene on Safehold will be pretty much ancient history by the time all of this happens.

Don

-
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat
Post by Marty   » Wed Jan 20, 2016 2:10 am

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Every time I see the word "Gbaba" I wonder why would humans come up with such a whacked out name.
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Re: New Terran Federation Evaluation of Gbaba Threat
Post by Weird Harold   » Wed Jan 20, 2016 2:39 am

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Marty wrote:Every time I see the word "Gbaba" I wonder why would humans come up with such a whacked out name.


An acronym for "Giant Bad-Ass-Biker Aliens"
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.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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