The end of the mesan alignement

Everyone, (including me) has been fixated on the GA finding Darius. It seems to me that Darius was created to be a lot like bolthole, a hidden shipyard and research facility.

Houdini actually signaled the beginning of the end of the mesan alignment. Think of it a bit like Pierre, Saint-Just and Ransom, along with a few thousand high ranking SS thugs leaving haven for bolthole.

The E wrote:No, they couldn't. Even assuming that the mass ceiling for that wormhole is high enough to allow that many ships through in one go, all of Manticore's improvements have focussed on making its ships as deadly as they can be over very long ranges; they have, in essence, come to the conclusion that long-range artillery is the way to win battles, not hand-to-hand combat, and a wormhole assault is entirely hand-to-hand. Ironically enough, ships like the SLN Scientists are probably better suited to a wormhole assault, given that they were built with the expectation of eventually having to exchange energy-range broadside fire with their enemies.

Actually they'd be screwed too; and worse I think.

There are 3 basic technologies I think would be used for defending a wormhole and the SLN Scientists are probably worse at defending against any of them than an Invictus.

1) Missile pods - laserheads have the reach to strike from outside the grav shear of the exit 'lane' so you can fire laserhead missiles at ships transiting the wormhole, while they can only defend themselves with PDLCs and onboard ECM. No tethered (or freeflying) decoys, no CMs, no sidewalls (anything without a sail in the grav shear gets very quickly destroyed - anything that tried to fire up a wedge gets destroyed slightly quicker and far more energetically). The SLN went with Halo for it's newest ECM, and you can't use Halo, with its multitude of tethered emitter drones, until you clear the grav entry turbulence. And the Scientists lack the massed PDLC batteries carried by the newer podlayers - so they'd be even less effective at the hopeless task of trying to pick off every incoming laserhead in the moment it takes to zip across PDLC range to reach the detonation point.

2) Energy fire - this is where you'd think the SLN Scientists should have an advantage; after all they're built for energy range combat. But remember, they have no sidewalls. That lets the defenders stay out just past the ~400,000 km range where grasers can penetrate sidewalls, immune from attack, and rain fire down on the exposed armor of the attackers. So the heavy energy batteries of the SLN are useless. And their armor is older and not the continuously grown armor Manticore introduced. So it's most likely less effective at resisting undiluted energy battery fire. Plus the small size of the Scientists works against them as well - less armor depth to ablate the incoming energy fire.

3) Mines - Neither the RMN nor the SLN is likely to be able to spot or destroy stealthly mines covering the exit terminus, so you're back to how well each can absorb energy fire - and again I give that edge to Manticore with their larger ship and more modern armor.

Don't get me wrong, the podlayers would get slaughtered against a half decent defense. I just think the ex-SLN Scientists would get slaughtered faster / worse.

Yeah, the differences in survivability are probably measured in seconds, when it comes down to it.

kzt wrote:Nope. They just get cut to ribbons too. It's been extensively discussed by David. It's pretty much impossible to force a fortified WH. And there exists at least one other WH that nobody has ever survived, so it is perfectly possible that this is just another such example, which means throwing more forces at it just means more people and material destroyed by the black hole or whatever is on the far end.

No arguments in the get cut to ribbons part. However, I just want to throw a wild idea out there. Simoes.

He might have reviewed information about anomalous WH spikes during his stint as researcher for the Alignment. The information he reviewed might be from both ends of the WH which would lead to the GA knowing that the other end of the WH is in MAN territory and most probably defended.

Rakhmamort wrote:... would lead to the GA knowing that the other end of the WH is in MAN territory and most probably defended.

Except "The Twins" are NOT in MAN territory, they are in an uninhabited and unclaimed system nobody but select Mannerheim personnel and the MAlign know contains anything of interest to anyone. Even the Felix WHJ, which connects to the other "Twin" isn't in a system claimed by the MAN, Mannerheim, or MAlign. It is in a system that Mannerheim is trying to purchase without any of the current claimants finding out it has a wormhole junction.

Simoes probably doesn't know anything about the locations involved if he does know anything at all.

David mentioned something about all the MA hyper-physicists who had written papers about the Twins. I think that is a clue.

kzt wrote:David mentioned something about all the MA hyper-physicists who had written papers about the Twins. I think that is a clue.

They can write papers without knowing where they are (the scientist or the Twins.)

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:David mentioned something about all the MA hyper-physicists who had written papers about the Twins. I think that is a clue.

They can write papers without knowing where they are (the scientist or the Twins.)

I quite agree with Rakhmamort; Simoes probably does know about all three systems: Torch, the Twins and Felix, in the kind of detail that's needed for doing theoretical hyperphysics in a practical sense. What he doesn't know is that it's important. Remember that he's a tech nerd; David made it quite clear that he knows nothing about the political situation etc.

They're also not in "MAN space," since there's no such thing as MAN space.

It'll be interesting to see whether David is going to arrange a situation where Simoes will naturally mention this weird system that has two wormhole termini from different systems sitting right on the hyper limit, one of which links to a system where the terminus is unusually close in (that is, Torch), and the other to a system with a junction that has four termini.

He's certainly set it up so it's possible. Whether he's going to use those clues, or do something else to finger Mannerheim and Darius, is something only he knows. Yet.

JohnRoth wrote:I quite agree with Rakhmamort; Simoes probably does know about all three systems: Torch, the Twins and Felix, in the kind of detail that's needed for doing theoretical hyperphysics in a practical sense. What he doesn't know is that it's important. Remember that he's a tech nerd; David made it quite clear that he knows nothing about the political situation etc.

My point is that we're discussing the Torch-Twins-Felix connections without knowing the co-ordinates of each terminus (for the most part) Simoes may have gotten the specs on the system without getting specific co-ordinates. Or given the MAlign's paranoia, he may have deliberately been given the wrong names/co-ordinates.

"Plot armor" may give him the right tidbit of information and cause him to mention it to one of his minders that will recognize the Torch wormhole. It would stretch credibility beyond belief that an assumption that the terminus at the twins is defended and Harvest Joy was murdered.