The Alignment's Next Step

JohnRoth wrote:

darrell wrote:forget about the lenny dets, a shark would make a good commerce raider. run up to a merchantman under stelth, and there is no way for them to see you.

Most merchants can accelerate faster than a Shark, which means that the Shark would have to place itself somewhere along a path that a merchant is likely to take. As soon as it fires off a missile, it's given away its position. The obvious response is: there's a warship in stealth out there.

Systems without an adequate fleet capable of locating and taking on a Shark probably don't have enough merchant traffic to make it worth while, systems that do have enough traffic can also detect a hyper transit that's fairly close in, which is more time the Shark has to spend getting into position.

you don't have to be faster than a merchantman if you can manuver against him and he can't see you with his crap sensors.

All you have to do is be somewhere near the path the merchant takes. approach in stealth to energy weapons range and order the merchant to drop their wedge. if they do, you have the ability to use your lower acceleration to capture them, if not you can destroy them with energy weapons.

Heck, for that matter, use a ghost and a couple of pinaces.

darrell wrote:
forget about the lenny dets, a shark would make a good commerce raider. run up to a merchantman under stelth, and there is no way for them to see you.

JohnRoth wrote:Most merchants can accelerate faster than a Shark, which means that the Shark would have to place itself somewhere along a path that a merchant is likely to take. As soon as it fires off a missile, it's given away its position. The obvious response is: there's a warship in stealth out there.

Systems without an adequate fleet capable of locating and taking on a Shark probably don't have enough merchant traffic to make it worth while, systems that do have enough traffic can also detect a hyper transit that's fairly close in, which is more time the Shark has to spend getting into position.

darrell wrote:you don't have to be faster than a merchantman if you can manuver against him and he can't see you with his crap sensors.

All you have to do is be somewhere near the path the merchant takes. approach in stealth to energy weapons range and order the merchant to drop their wedge. if they do, you have the ability to use your lower acceleration to capture them, if not you can destroy them with energy weapons.

Heck, for that matter, use a ghost and a couple of pinaces.

Velocity and acceleration are two different things. If you're pushing your spider drive to 150 g, and the merchie is accelerating at 200, you're not going to stay close enough to talk to them and get them to drop their wedge. And when you hail them you've just given away your position. Not that it matters, because most merchies aren't going to get past the WTF stage before they're out of range of your energy weapons.

Now if you're carrying a pinnace with a wedge and decent acceleration, that could make an interestingly useful combination. Provided the merchie doesn't have a weapon or two of its own and blows the pinnace to dust bunnies.

If I'm commerce raiding in a 4 mt spider I'm not going to be talking to the merchants or trying to capture them. I'm going to be expeditiously blowing them up in a way that leaves as few clues at to what happened as is possible.

Their next step will be to release the Chuck Norris clones.

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JohnRoth wrote:

darrell wrote:
forget about the lenny dets, a shark would make a good commerce raider. run up to a merchantman under stelth, and there is no way for them to see you.

JohnRoth wrote:Most merchants can accelerate faster than a Shark, which means that the Shark would have to place itself somewhere along a path that a merchant is likely to take. As soon as it fires off a missile, it's given away its position. The obvious response is: there's a warship in stealth out there.

Systems without an adequate fleet capable of locating and taking on a Shark probably don't have enough merchant traffic to make it worth while, systems that do have enough traffic can also detect a hyper transit that's fairly close in, which is more time the Shark has to spend getting into position.

darrell wrote:you don't have to be faster than a merchantman if you can manuver against him and he can't see you with his crap sensors.

All you have to do is be somewhere near the path the merchant takes. approach in stealth to energy weapons range and order the merchant to drop their wedge. if they do, you have the ability to use your lower acceleration to capture them, if not you can destroy them with energy weapons.

Heck, for that matter, use a ghost and a couple of pinaces.

Velocity and acceleration are two different things. If you're pushing your spider drive to 150 g, and the merchie is accelerating at 200, you're not going to stay close enough to talk to them and get them to drop their wedge. And when you hail them you've just given away your position. Not that it matters, because most merchies aren't going to get past the WTF stage before they're out of range of your energy weapons.

Now if you're carrying a pinnace with a wedge and decent acceleration, that could make an interestingly useful combination. Provided the merchie doesn't have a weapon or two of its own and blows the pinnace to dust bunnies.

you are ignoring position. put your spider drive ship half way between the inhabited planet and the hyper limit. The ship will come to you, and it dosen't matter if the merchant is coming or going. 50G's acceleration should be enough for a "blow them out of space as they pass by" intercept.

Unless they can strike all of Havens shipyards including Bolthole they should not do any military actions. The more they use their ships the greater the possibility of them running in to GA military.

The best option would be what they are doing using individuals like Firebrand as well as their patsies in Solarian League and Navy to cause havoc.

pnakasone wrote:Unless they can strike all of Havens shipyards including Bolthole they should not do any military actions. The more they use their ships the greater the possibility of them running in to GA military.

The best option would be what they are doing using individuals like Firebrand as well as their patsies in Solarian League and Navy to cause havoc.

There is also the possibility of using them overtly. You sneak in close using a LD squadron, then obliterate all the military elements close to Manticore and drop stealth on a pair of the LDs and ask to talk to Queen Elizabeth.

It's a very high risk plan...

kzt wrote:

pnakasone wrote:Unless they can strike all of Havens shipyards including Bolthole they should not do any military actions. The more they use their ships the greater the possibility of them running in to GA military.

The best option would be what they are doing using individuals like Firebrand as well as their patsies in Solarian League and Navy to cause havoc.

There is also the possibility of using them overtly. You sneak in close using a LD squadron, then obliterate all the military elements close to Manticore and drop stealth on a pair of the LDs and ask to talk to Queen Elizabeth.

It's a very high risk plan...

Problem is that how do you get that close to a major planet with out someone spotting you. Remember that Manticores home system force did detect at least a traces of a hyper space transitions from the forces that did Yawata strike. They at the least have LACs patrolling a good volume of the home system. Given the probable amount of defenses in stealth around Manticore I would not bet on any chance of getting enough of it to want to do such an attack.

pnakasone wrote:

kzt wrote:
Problem is that how do you get that close to a major planet with out someone spotting you. Remember that Manticores home system force did detect at least a traces of a hyper space transitions from the forces that did Yawata strike. They at the least have LACs patrolling a good volume of the home system. Given the probable amount of defenses in stealth around Manticore I would not bet on any chance of getting enough of it to want to do such an attack.

Also keep in mind that anytime a sensor catches a whiff of something anywhere close to the 'ghosts' the MALign put on the sensors during OB and the Manticore system will be on high alert for months. They will send out enough drones and LACs to sweep every inch of the system before they stand down.

pnakasone wrote:Problem is that how do you get that close to a major planet with out someone spotting you. Remember that Manticores home system force did detect at least a traces of a hyper space transitions from the forces that did Yawata strike. They at the least have LACs patrolling a good volume of the home system. Given the probable amount of defenses in stealth around Manticore I would not bet on any chance of getting enough of it to want to do such an attack.

You have multiple options. David noted that the big sensors are blind in closer then a few light hours, so that leaves a gap where you might be able to pull it off.

Another possible trick would be having a normal freighter transiting to go out the WHJ with a spider (or more) flying in close formation with it. You'd want to bounce out a bit far out, so you go for the 2nd SD of far.

Another option: Say screw stealth and have say 36 ships make roughly simultaneous close to the hyper limit. Most them are small spiders moving fast, some are very large spiders moving slowly. So Manticore sees dozens of transits by invisible ships all around the hyperlimit, all far enough apart that ships heading there can't realistically get to any of the others. What are they going to do? Note that in 7 hours you can get from the hyper limit to a zero-zero rendezvous with Manticore. And if you had managed to draw a huge chunk of the RMN off by staging transits at light months out in the 24 hours before this there probably are not a lot of ships you have handy.

But I said it's a high risk plan and I mean it. There are lots of possibilities for disaster here.