Eridani Edict Violation of the most Dismissive Kind...

cthia wrote:"I LOVE IT!" Says Anisimovna.

Especially as a distraction while the Eridani Strike Computers are building up a lot of heat running CSAPPS.

The subtle use of Malign tech really frightens me. Like a broken record.

It is the difference in the MAlign saying...

"LOOK! WE JUST DID SOMETHING!"

and

"look we just did something."

I'm not sure if I ever got a chance to include it, but I always envisioned some sore of distraction to help carry off the premise of this thread. This is perfect! Thanks feyhunde. Your work has not gone unnoticed inside the Onion.

feyhunde wrote:I just had an actual interesting use for the captured SLN fleet.

A false flag EE violation. Running a ship on remote at high fraction C into a planet. Possibly by using a fake SLN transponder to get deep into a league system.

Now nobody rational would ever do this. It's pointless as a waste of life not to matter cold blooded. But the MAlign might view it as a way to make the League come apart. I'm not sure even their crazies would be crazy enough to do it (the final flourish of Houdini taking out the more bloodthirsty types who would have ran it).


Well, MAlignment might just grab itself an SLN warship then use the real thing to go in an "punish" a system for trading with Manticore and manage to commit an EE violation. All the bells and whistles, using computer generated images for the Captain etc and run a scenario with the ship (being the same class as something the GA or at least the Manties have captured. Except make it with something that will be "discovered" that will prove that it was actualy a RMN crew doing it as a false flag oppereation to discredit the SLN.
Is that devious enough for you? And, of course bloody enough?

feyhunde wrote:I have to admit the second part of using an SLN vessel to commit a more regular EE violation wasn't my idea, but would be less crazy. I'm honestly thinking the grand plan for MAlign inner circle has always been to redo the final war in such a way that Beuwolf, and it's anti-transhumanist life code gets discredited. For that to happen, core world will need to burn, and the war needs to escalate into a fury that's not been seen really since the final war made everyone skittish about biotech.

Possibly weaponized Nanotech could do it. (Not biotech but full on grey goo).

But Kinetic are already there, with multiple options. Including false flags exploiting weaknesses in the SLN, Long term plans (launch a destroyer sized projectile outside the sensor shell get it up to speed, and coast), shorter plans using the spider drive (also shortcut due to the defections) etc.

Like one of my questions has always been the true purpose of the spider drive fleet the MAlign is building. It's too big for a couple of key hits ala oyster bay. It seems like its intended to do far more when complete, such as EE violations that reduce a system to ashes. (Which I fear Beowulf is going to face in the upcoming battle).

Such incidents could make what's been a naval war turn into a war to the knife. Especially if the MAlign tries counter atrocities, like wiping out a Manticore aligned planet. Create a cycle of atrocities which will split league systems enough that more atrocities can be done to make it a really nasty civil war.

Basically, the Final War again. But this time the Renaissance factor can play Beowulf.

cthia wrote:All of this simply has to happen just a short junction away book-after-next.

What's even more sobering is considering what sort of missile ranges the MA will introduce.

They'll be targeting from 150M klicks from beyond "outside the RZ zone!"

RFN¹ + MAN¹ = Holocaust²

cthia wrote:All of this simply has to happen just a short junction away book-after-next.

What's even more sobering is considering what sort of missile ranges the MA will introduce.

They'll be targeting from 150M klicks from beyond "outside the RZ zone!"

RFN¹ + MAN¹ = Holocaust²

ldwechsler wrote:

cthia wrote:All of this simply has to happen just a short junction away book-after-next.

What's even more sobering is considering what sort of missile ranges the MA will introduce.

They'll be targeting from 150M klicks from beyond "outside the RZ zone!"

RFN¹ + MAN¹ = Holocaust²

The simple most important factor is that MAlign wants to destroy the League. Remember how many planets are part of it. Going after the Manties will probably not work all that well.

We don't know that the missiles will have that kind of range. But we do know that the Manties have spotted signs of the drive. Once that happens, the engineers can really get started on getting the correct hardware and software to spot the spider drive.

Hernoes can help them. Yeah, I know he focused on the streak drive but he had to learn at least some things about the other one. The Onion may have many layers but he, for many years, was considered safe and he was someone specializing in drives. Chances are, there will be some ships able to pick up the spider drives quickly. And for a bit, the Manties could make certain that at least one or two of them were with each task force.

The one thing the top MAlign leadership wants is to become a target. Forget the Cherwell Convention. We saw in SoV that a lot of the top MAlign players hated Manpower. Focusing on Mesa's enemies will draw attention.

They can do much better attacking planets that are either not in the League or the GA or disaffected planets in their vicinity. After all, they can provide some defense and maybe in return convince the leaders of these new planets to allow a few "minor modifications" of the genome. Perhaps they can claim they were developed to deal with specialized issues on a wide variety of planets.

The smart move is to NOT be noticed for a few years. Building 50 SD (P)'s a year would allow them to have a nice fleet in ten to fifteen years.

Brigade XO wrote:We have made all sorts of speculation about what the Lenny Dets can and will do and how they are inteneded to be used. We have been told that the Sharks are training ships for the LD class and the Shark weapons systems (other than defences which we have not been shown beyond the whole stealth routine) were mounted OUTBOARD on them and, apparently, the LDs will be able to house things like graser torpedoes (with spider drive) in magazines to be tube launced.

Great. And probably the majority of the weapons actualy used in hitting Manticor and Grayson were essentialy ballistic deliver of "things". Nobody seems to actualy have said that the ballistic weapons were laser heads.

Brigade XO wrote:They didn't have to be, you hit a ship (without wedge or sidewall) or a space station or orbital factory or shipyard with something with a good mass going at reltitiveistic speeds and you have Kenetic Impactors that will just destroy things with lots and LOTS of energy releast in additioin the whatever general smashing they do when hitting. The Grasor Torpedoes are much more sophisticated. They sneek in and cut through things- massive cuts, very fast and across lots of the target. Slash along an axis (pick one) of a station including a fusion plant and you get all sorts of destruction. You will chop up your target, with the resulting catastrophic damage across multiple decks and sections (even between those with physical blast/firewall shielding is you go length-wise or on a diagonal with capital-ship graders agains an un-shielded target. Just what happened to the three major Manticoreian station.
So what else can you use a Spider Drive capital ship like a LD for? Take a rock from WAY beyond the Oort Cloud, or even from another system and bring it up to some significant fraction of C and put in a ballistic path to hit a planet without your drive (no wedge) letting anybody know your are there and doing that. Your just a hole in space that isn't going to be seen by even the Manticore System Survailence and extra-systerm Net. You have LOTs of time, and you bring the dam rock up to someting like .5C (if that is possible) and just "let it go" and then you just bend your trajectory to miss the system and do whatever nessisary to get back into hyper.
Or you bring a crapload of Graser Torpedoes and spread them (after your Ghost scouts have gathered the targeting data) and send them in for a cooridnated attack at 30 or more things in a system. Heck you can slide INTO the system and use essentialy real-time tactical data to direct GTs to hit parked warships with down the throat shots.

The Alighment really doesn't care about the normal humans on any planet. Just hit several with extintion level events or enough to kill 80% of the current population and eventualy you will be able to set your own colony there....time is not a serious factor.

So, yeah, I see the LDs as a significant problem being used by a groupl that see much of humanity as expendable.

pappilon wrote: Yes, I pretty much think they did. The pods came in ballistically since they lacked any drivers at allThen they launched their missiles which either had spider drives or regular wedges. yes some were grazers, some were lasers and the ones for the orbital yards were contact nukes.

Vince wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:


The simple most important factor is that MAlign wants to destroy the League. Remember how many planets are part of it. Going after the Manties will probably not work all that well.

We don't know that the missiles will have that kind of range. But we do know that the Manties have spotted signs of the drive. Once that happens, the engineers can really get started on getting the correct hardware and software to spot the spider drive.

Hernoes can help them. Yeah, I know he focused on the streak drive but he had to learn at least some things about the other one. The Onion may have many layers but he, for many years, was considered safe and he was someone specializing in drives. Chances are, there will be some ships able to pick up the spider drives quickly. And for a bit, the Manties could make certain that at least one or two of them were with each task force.

The one thing the top MAlign leadership wants is to become a target. Forget the Cherwell Convention. We saw in SoV that a lot of the top MAlign players hated Manpower. Focusing on Mesa's enemies will draw attention.

They can do much better attacking planets that are either not in the League or the GA or disaffected planets in their vicinity. After all, they can provide some defense and maybe in return convince the leaders of these new planets to allow a few "minor modifications" of the genome. Perhaps they can claim they were developed to deal with specialized issues on a wide variety of planets.

The smart move is to NOT be noticed for a few years. Building 50 SD (P)'s a year would allow them to have a nice fleet in ten to fifteen years.

Herlander Simões is a theoretical (as opposed to hands on hardware experimental) mathematical hyper-physicist and is known to have worked on the theoretical side of the 'streak drive'. We don't if he ever worked on the spider drive.

The hyper generator is not a drive, if you are at rest and turn your hyper generator on full power you will go nowhere fast--as in, you won't move at all. Actually, the best description of the hyper generator would be the hyper coaster brake, since you can coast in hyper without powering it once you are in hyper-space, while when you translate into/out of normal or hyper-space, or from one hyper band to another, you actually lose a huge percentage of your existing speed. (Which was actually used as a braking maneuver to save reaction mass by early reaction drive hyper ships when they exited hyper-space.) So the Mesan Alignment lives down to its reputation by calling their improved hyper generator the streak drive instead of its real name, the streak brake.

On the other hand, the spider drive is an actual drive derived from improved tractor beams, in that when you turn it on, you actually accelerate or decelerate the ship it is mounted in, either in normal or hyper-space. It just can't translate into/out of normal or hyper-space or between hyper bands.