Eridani Edict Violation of the most Dismissive Kind...

quite possibly a cat wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
The Shadow and the Flash is a short story about two inventors who compete to invent "perfect invisibility." One chooses to pursue the "perfect black" where all light is absorbed but leaves a shadow. The other chooses to pursue "perfect transparency" where all light is passed through, but is betrayed by a prismatic flash at certain angles.

Both achieve invisibility, but each method has has a betraying drawback.

The MAlign and Manticore both achieve near impenetrable stealth, but they do it by different means. An example is the waste heat beam from a spider drive ship because it doesn't have a wedge to shunt the heat into. MAlign stealth is very good, but it is oranges to Manticore's very stealthy apples

The way you find a ship is usually by the wedge. Its the only thing that FTL sensors can detect.

There may be other ways that are just not used. Since the one the MAnties have works, that's what is used.

Hemphill and Foraker have top scientists and engineers. We know from textev there's some evidence left behind by the spider drives/

Given some time, they will figure things out.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:The MAlign and Manticore both achieve near impenetrable stealth, but they do it by different means. An example is the waste heat beam from a spider drive ship because it doesn't have a wedge to shunt the heat into. MAlign stealth is very good, but it is oranges to Manticore's very stealthy apples

The way you find a ship is usually by the wedge. Its the only thing that FTL sensors can detect.

That's the whole point the MAlign and Manticore (and Haven, SLN, Andermani, et al) have found ways to hide the wedge or get rid of it entirely. As long as the wedge and any other detectable emission is hidden the stealth works. The MAlign just took an entirely different approach to being invisible than everyone else. Doesn't make it "better," just different.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:The MAlign and Manticore both achieve near impenetrable stealth, but they do it by different means. An example is the waste heat beam from a spider drive ship because it doesn't have a wedge to shunt the heat into. MAlign stealth is very good, but it is oranges to Manticore's very stealthy apples

The way you find a ship is usually by the wedge. Its the only thing that FTL sensors can detect.

Weird Harold wrote:That's the whole point the MAlign and Manticore (and Haven, SLN, Andermani, et al) have found ways to hide the wedge or get rid of it entirely. As long as the wedge and any other detectable emission is hidden the stealth works. The MAlign just took an entirely different approach to being invisible than everyone else. Doesn't make it "better," just different.

The difference itself makes it better, for starters. Nobody else has the tech, the specs, or the means to detect it.

The objective is to hide a ship not hide a wedge, and to do it in any successfully conceivable way possible, not by everyone else's doctrine.

The difference steps outside of the GA's toy box, and everyone elses's, box. Exclusivity has its own rewards and can be better because it temporarily corners the market, witnessed by the GA now having to try to play catch up to the tech.

It may turn out to be short lived, but if it holds up just long enough for a new sheriff to take over or take root...

You can't compare apples to oranges Harold. But you can compare fruit. The fruit is to hide a ship. The fruit of the MAlign's tech is witnessed with Oyster Bay. No one else serves Malign fruit. And when you do that and there is no fruit basket designed to "capture" the tech yet, then you are better.

"We've detected them in our radar basket sir?"

cthia wrote:The difference itself makes it better, for starters. Nobody else has the tech, the specs, or the means to detect it.

The objective is to hide a ship not hide a wedge, and to do it in any successfully conceivable way possible, not by everyone else's doctrine.

The difference steps outside of the GA's toy box, and everyone elses's, box. Exclusivity has its own rewards and can be better because it temporarily corners the market, witnessed by the GA now having to try to play catch up to the tech.

It may turn out to be short lived, but if it holds up just long enough for a new sheriff to take over or take root...

You can't compare apples to oranges Harold. But you can compare fruit. The fruit is to hide a ship. The fruit of the MAlign's tech is witnessed with Oyster Bay. No one else serves Malign fruit. And when you do that and there is no fruit basket designed to "capture" the tech yet, then you are better.

"We've detected them in our radar basket sir?"

i’d say the actual objective is to hide the ship while it’s doing something useful. The MAlign spider drive allows them to hide at even very close range while accelerating at around 100, to maybe 150, gravities — but their ships are incapable of accelerating faster than that. Manticore‘s stealth doesn’t work quite as close range; but stay a little further away and they can hide their low powered wedge while doing at least 400 gravities. So their ships are capable of pulling off intercepts while under stealth that a spider ship just cannot do; it doesn’t have the acceleration.

So it’s a trade-off.

Jonathan_S wrote: i’d say the actual objective is to hide the ship while it’s doing something useful. The MAlign spider drive allows them to hide at even very close range while accelerating at around 100, to maybe 150, gravities — but their ships are incapable of accelerating faster than that. Manticore‘s stealth doesn’t work quite as close range; but stay a little further away and they can hide their low powered wedge while doing at least 400 gravities. So their ships are capable of pulling off intercepts while under stealth that a spider ship just cannot do; it doesn’t have the acceleration.

So it’s a trade-off.

Invisibility is a pretty good trick. As som MAN admiral commented: "you can't shoot what you can't see." So priority 1at bolthole will be (or at least should be) to find some way to detect spider driven ships and missiles at something farther than grazer range.

Also acceleration advantage is of no use to a blind ship. One may be able to outrun an opponent, but until that one knows where the opponent actually is, he has no idea where to run away to.

pappilon wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote: i’d say the actual objective is to hide the ship while it’s doing something useful. The MAlign spider drive allows them to hide at even very close range while accelerating at around 100, to maybe 150, gravities — but their ships are incapable of accelerating faster than that. Manticore‘s stealth doesn’t work quite as close range; but stay a little further away and they can hide their low powered wedge while doing at least 400 gravities. So their ships are capable of pulling off intercepts while under stealth that a spider ship just cannot do; it doesn’t have the acceleration.

So it’s a trade-off.

Invisibility is a pretty good trick. As som MAN admiral commented: "you can't shoot what you can't see." So priority 1at bolthole will be (or at least should be) to find some way to detect spider driven ships and missiles at something farther than grazer range.

Also acceleration advantage is of no use to a blind ship. One may be able to outrun an opponent, but until that one knows where the opponent actually is, he has no idea where to run away to.

Depends on how much of an acceleration advantage. WWI & WWII Convoys were often able to evade U-boats by random zig zags even when the uboat wasn't detected. You didn't specifically know you'd evaded on, but more that one submarine skipper guessed wrong about the base course of a convoy and watched it steam over the horizon faster than the sub could follow (without surfacing and abandoning it's primary form of stealth)

If MAlign ships want to sneak in and smash fixed targets then yes, stealth is king, as long as you don't mind the long mission times. But if you want to cut off and ambush ships headed too or from the hyper limit, having only 100 gees can make it darn hard to intercept an SD(P) capable over over 600 if it makes a few major random course changes. (Or if it builds up velocity at 400 or so while under it's stealth you'd nave to be lucky enough to randomly be in it's path to have a shot before it disappears over the wall.

I'm certainly not saying the MAlign spider drive is useless - far from it. Nor am I saying that the Grand Alliance shouldn't make some method of detecting it a top priority. But there are missions it's not great at - and barring further major breakthroughs in grav plate tech it'll never be very good at. But that doesn't mean the MAlign would be better off without it - just that they accepted trade-offs to get the improved up-close stealth maneuvering and some of those mean it's not better than wedge powered ships for all missions, or even for all stealth missions.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:

Invisibility is a pretty good trick. As som MAN admiral commented: "you can't shoot what you can't see." So priority 1at bolthole will be (or at least should be) to find some way to detect spider driven ships and missiles at something farther than grazer range.

Also acceleration advantage is of no use to a blind ship. One may be able to outrun an opponent, but until that one knows where the opponent actually is, he has no idea where to run away to.

Depends on how much of an acceleration advantage. WWI & WWII Convoys were often able to evade U-boats by random zig zags even when the uboat wasn't detected. You didn't specifically know you'd evaded on, but more that one submarine skipper guessed wrong about the base course of a convoy and watched it steam over the horizon faster than the sub could follow (without surfacing and abandoning it's primary form of stealth)

If MAlign ships want to sneak in and smash fixed targets then yes, stealth is king, as long as you don't mind the long mission times. But if you want to cut off and ambush ships headed too or from the hyper limit, having only 100 gees can make it darn hard to intercept an SD(P) capable over over 600 if it makes a few major random course changes. (Or if it builds up velocity at 400 or so while under it's stealth you'd nave to be lucky enough to randomly be in it's path to have a shot before it disappears over the wall.

I'm certainly not saying the MAlign spider drive is useless - far from it. Nor am I saying that the Grand Alliance shouldn't make some method of detecting it a top priority. But there are missions it's not great at - and barring further major breakthroughs in grav plate tech it'll never be very good at. But that doesn't mean the MAlign would be better off without it - just that they accepted trade-offs to get the improved up-close stealth maneuvering and some of those mean it's not better than wedge powered ships for all missions, or even for all stealth missions.

The issue is more likely how quickly will the Grand Alliance create a counter for the spider drive? If they have it within a year, then much of the advantage will be lost.

I think it will more likely be used to cause mischief inside the League which will not have much in the way of defenses against it. Then the Grand Alliance can be blamed.

While the GA fleet is knocking down space targets legitimately, spider vessels can come in (although not all that fast...remember they crept in at Yawata so that may be an issue) and throw a few direct missiles on a planet. Then the GA gets blamed.

ldwechsler wrote:The issue is more likely how quickly will the Grand Alliance create a counter for the spider drive? If they have it within a year, then much of the advantage will be lost.

I think it will more likely be used to cause mischief inside the League which will not have much in the way of defenses against it. Then the Grand Alliance can be blamed.

While the GA fleet is knocking down space targets legitimately, spider vessels can come in (although not all that fast...remember they crept in at Yawata so that may be an issue) and throw a few direct missiles on a planet. Then the GA gets blamed.

How much advantage is lost depends on how good the counter is. Many here, myself included, are suspecting that at least the initial counter will have some operational similarities to early ASDIC/SONAR -- an active ping that detects something about the spider (much speculation about FTL comms 'echoing' off the spider legs latched onto the Alpha wall)

That would be a short ranged active sensor. Good enough to keep them from sneaking up on your stations (harbors) but you'd make yourself visible while looking, and it'd be shorter ranged than normal sensors (grav sensors, or in the sub analogy the MkI eyeball)

That also implies that if a system is worried about commerce raiding they'd need to provide escorts 'pinging away' to sanitize the routes to and from the hyper limit. (Or possibly you could do that with remote sensor platforms -- after all we don't have the slavishly follow the WWI ASDIC/SONAR analogy; the rest of the tech is allowed to come into play and modify it)

But I assume we'll have to wait for the follow-on series to see how they manage the Spider Threat.

ldwechsler wrote:While the GA fleet is knocking down space targets legitimately, spider vessels can come in (although not all that fast...remember they crept in at Yawata so that may be an issue) and throw a few direct missiles on a planet.

IIRC, it took something like six months from exiting hyper near Manticore before the Yawata Strike was executed. Not exactly a weapons system usable for targets of opportunity. Most battles with the SLN have lasted as long as the first missile salvo; even the build-up to the actual missile salvo takes less than a day.

Jonathan_S wrote:...the initial counter will have some operational similarities to early ASDIC/SONAR -- an active ping that detects something about the spider (much speculation about FTL comms 'echoing' off the spider legs latched onto the Alpha wall)

That would be a short ranged active sensor.

If my speculation that an active Spider Drive causes static inf FTL comms, then the first iteration of "FTL-ASDIC" will be a passive system akin to directional hydrophones. Something that provides bearing, but not range; it will take two or more detectors to triangulate a position for targeting.

A missile seeker that homes on the "static" would prove effective against ships or the graser torpedoes.

Do realize the operational nature of these things. Remember, they were, are, in limited supply. The successful submarines and submarine warfare of WWII operated in tandem, in packs. That pack mentality tempered with pack tactics, assisted by the Sharks that will be ready then – whenever then is -- and assisted by the MAN will be devastating. Sure, the GA may detect one or two of them. But hoping to detect a pack of these things amidst all the other malignant clouds simultaneously descending over the horizon in a truly military operation staged by the Malign that is not simply a drive-by shooting… not likely.