Hey! No fair, putting a wormhole junction there!

Question. Memory leak. Are the junctions closed to simply the League or to all nations? If to all as ISTR, what the heck are the controllers actually doing, for the most part? Have the junctions become somewhat lax, complacent? Taking leave groundside a bit much?

My thought about the MAlignment needing to beef up, and in many cases start, defence of their secret wormhole network should have said defending on the MAlignment side of said wormsholes. At the moment, the only two described as having defences are the MAlignment end of the Torch wormhole and the fact that Mannerheim's SDF is using as a place to practice and excercise that othewise apparently useless system which has an unannounced terminus to the MAlignment network.
Not clear if they have a ship or so actualy hanging around out by the terminus but they clearly have a presence in their excercise area. Either the people who still have a claim on the system don't know or have no practical ability to know nor to object to Mannerheim playing war games there.

Putting a ship or ships by the exits from the Malignemet network would be an indication that something was interesting there. Just why a ship should go take a survey of those several locations (other than Torch) isn't clear since the rest of the systems involved (for the exits) don't appear to have any reason for someone to visit them and so perhaps notice some evidence of a wormhole.

It wouldl appear that the only reason that the force that killed the Harvest Joy was there was that Torch had been taken over by the genetic slaves and had both Haven and Manticore as intersted parties- and both of them will activly look for wormholes or have ships capable of noticing the evenidence (military and higher end civilian sensors) that were traveling in the area. The only real option the MAlignment had was to make the far end of the Torch wormhole a deathtrap....though it might have been better both stratigicly and tacticlay to mearly hammer the Harvest Joy so it couldn't hyper out, board her and strip out the data. The Alignment could easily had "dissapeard" the survivors once they (and the ships computers) had been interrogated so it still would have vanished into the wormhole.

Do you mean better placed than Torch?

Remember that the Malingn already have a unknown wormhole terminus in the backyard of the alliance...

I was under the impression that the Terminus at Torch was the back door directly to the GA space

Korgano wrote:Do you mean better placed than Torch?

Remember that the Malingn already have a unknown wormhole terminus in the backyard of the alliance...

I dunno... perhaps Torch is a bit too well placed, too visible for the MAlign to begin staging operations, clandestinely. I was thinking more in an out of the way Class U (unforgiving, LOL) planet where no one would suspect.

However, your point raises some interesting possibilities if the Torch terminus remains undetected until such time as a MAlign invasion. Especially in conjunction (no pun intended) with another fortuitous but unobstrusive terminus.

George J. Smith wrote:I was under the impression that the Terminus at Torch was the back door directly to the GA space

Yup. That's the reason why the MAlign had Manpower take over a planet in the Congo system - to keep other people from prospecting and accidentally finding the terminus. The fact that the planet turned out to be a pharmaceutical gold mine was incidental.

cthia wrote:

Korgano wrote:Do you mean better placed than Torch?

Remember that the Malingn already have a unknown wormhole terminus in the backyard of the alliance...

I dunno... perhaps Torch is a bit too well placed, too visible for the MAlign to begin staging operations, clandestinely. I was thinking more in an out of the way Class U (unforgiving, LOL) planet where no one would suspect.

However, your point raises some interesting possibilities if the Torch terminus remains undetected until such time as a MAlign invasion. Especially in conjunction (no pun intended) with another fortuitous but unobstrusive terminus.

That was, I believe, the original plan. The insurgents didn't find any evidence that anyone on Verdant Vista knew of the wormhole terminus.

Then some genius decided to leak the fact that there was a wormhole terminus there to light a fire under Erewhon and destabilize the local situation.

If the MAlignment wants to use the Torch Wormhole now, they have to make a couple of decisions.
The 1st is, how many warships (fast tough ones) will they have to send through along with any other ships to deal with anything that is showing a impeller signature within range of the wormhole to pick up the transit and subsiquent movement away from said wormhole. The 1st time ANYBODY gets hard data that an impeller signature came out of that wormhole and went somewhere, things are going to get intresting.
Sneaking a Streak Drive ship though it is fraught with exposure for the Malignemt. Who knows what might be parked out there taking readings but otherwise just making like a hole in space and gathering data. Not saying Manticore would then throw an SD through the wormhole (on the off chance it would survive what is then probably an ambush on the other side, but they are going to want to stick some sort of picket on top of the wormhole.

The alternative for the Malignment is- at an appropirate time- more than one taskforce thought the wormhole taking a shortcut in an assault at Manticore or some other high value target and send a smaller force to devistate Torch plus wipe out anything hypercapable in system. That would be preemptive against anything from Torch that happened to be operating withing sensor range of the wormhole from running back to Torch to pass the word and have it spread from there. That they could "clean up" the Torch mess of homeworld for escaped Genetic Slaves would be considered a bonus.

All it really does is give Manticore and Haven another place they have to post ships and work harder at sorting out what the MAlignment has been up to.

It's a death trap. You can't survive the transit if the people running it have any clue at all.

The only possible way to make it work requires the breakthrough hinted at by David that you exit any other WH terminus via any other terminus. Except that they likely will have fortified the far end too, and the transit time to get through the lane or recharge your hyperdrive means you get shot to ribbons.

Brigade XO wrote:If the MAlignment wants to use the Torch Wormhole now, they have to make a couple of decisions.
The 1st is, how many warships (fast tough ones) will they have to send through along with any other ships to deal with anything that is showing a impeller signature within range of the wormhole to pick up the transit and subsiquent movement away from said wormhole. The 1st time ANYBODY gets hard data that an impeller signature came out of that wormhole and went somewhere, things are going to get intresting.
Sneaking a Streak Drive ship though it is fraught with exposure for the Malignemt. Who knows what might be parked out there taking readings but otherwise just making like a hole in space and gathering data. Not saying Manticore would then throw an SD through the wormhole (on the off chance it would survive what is then probably an ambush on the other side, but they are going to want to stick some sort of picket on top of the wormhole.

The alternative for the Malignment is- at an appropirate time- more than one taskforce thought the wormhole taking a shortcut in an assault at Manticore or some other high value target and send a smaller force to devistate Torch plus wipe out anything hypercapable in system. That would be preemptive against anything from Torch that happened to be operating withing sensor range of the wormhole from running back to Torch to pass the word and have it spread from there. That they could "clean up" the Torch mess of homeworld for escaped Genetic Slaves would be considered a bonus.

All it really does is give Manticore and Haven another place they have to post ships and work harder at sorting out what the MAlignment has been up to.

If they want to use that wormhole they pretty much need to send a force to Torch through conventional hyperspace to seize the terminus -- then they can begin using the wormhole.

They've got plenty of time and no reason to risk the very high losses a wormhole assault would entail. (You could use Sharks again to ambush the defenders - Torch shouldn't have the kind of deep space arrays Manticore does so you don't need to sneak in from so many light weeks out; and you could dispatch the assault force while your Lenny Detd are still getting fitted out or working up.

But I don't think it's necessarily worth it.- after word reached the Grand Alliance that Torch's wormhole has been seized they've got plenty of power to take it back and seal it off. (Though I guess the MAlign could try to do that just for the one time tactical advantage of forcing the GA to enter a prepare ambush (and then retreat after bloodying them)