Eridani Edict Violation of the most Dismissive Kind...

Brigade XO wrote:If my memory is accurate, the ships that delivered the Sharks and Ghosts were conventional massive freighters that made extreemly low speed transitions at great distances from the target systems to present the smallest possible transition signature and appear to be sensor ghosts.

IIRC, The Ghosts were delivered by freighters, but the Sharks came out of hyper on their own, tightly grouped to present a single "sensor ghost"

Brigade XO wrote:While I'm not sure what the speeds are for the LD's, they would be avoiding the whole transition signature problem.

I'm pretty sure that like any other ship in the Honorverse, the LDs are limited by particle screens to 0.7 or 0.8 C and by hyper-physics to 0.3 C or less to translate to hyperspace.

Where they are limited is acceleration. Like any Spider Drive ship, they would be limited to what Grav plates can offset rather than dumping Inertia into the wedge with a Compensator. They should be comparable to the Sharks and Ghosts as far as Acceleration is concerned -- 100-150 G's.

Where the Spider Drive has a non-stealth advantage over impeller drive is that it is apparently NOT limited by tonnage. A spider-drive skateboard and a spider-drive super-fort would accelerate the same.

Loren Pechtel wrote:It takes a dual-drive missile at max range before you can dodge into hyper. Remember what happened at the Battle of Manticore? The Havenite ambush fleet was outside the hyper limit and figured out that the missiles coming for them were Apollo birds--they tried to hyper out but didn't have enough time. If there was any possible shortcut they would have taken it.

quite possibly a cat wrote:Plus hyperspace is a crap place for Manticore to fight anyway. You can dodge those missile waves if you have your hyperdrive ready to start with.

The Havenites waited far too late start. IIRC, they could have done it sooner. Plus, even limiting range to a DDM max range is a massive hit for Manticore. Plenty of other people have DDM now. The general degradation of Apollo sucks too. A worst case event would be enemies dropping right on top of them, although would be hard to pull off.

I do agree they waited too long. I was giving a value for the too long (he's talked about it elsewhere)--it's just under the run time of a DDM. You just have to get closer than that before firing and your target can't hyper out.

quite possibly a cat wrote:The Havenites waited far too late start. IIRC, they could have done it sooner. Plus, even limiting range to a DDM max range is a massive hit for Manticore. Plenty of other people have DDM now. The general degradation of Apollo sucks too. A worst case event would be enemies dropping right on top of them, although would be hard to pull off.

Don’t assume the improved hyperdrive is only improved in the ways we have been told.

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?"

In a sense you are right, cthia. But Harolds point is that they are only one trick ahead. Now that it has been used against them, the Manties know about it and will go looking for the solution, and undoubtedly find it even if it takes a while.

Don

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n7axw wrote:

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?"

In a sense you are right, cthia. But Harolds point is that they are only one trick ahead. Now that it has been used against them, the Manties know about it and will go looking for the solution, and undoubtedly find it even if it takes a while.

Don

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Indeed.

Granted, but that presumes that the Malign will simply rest on their laurels, and that they are as militarily incompetent as the Sollies, and that their intelligence is also as incompetent as the Sollies’.

They will not, they are not and it is not.

It also assumes that the Malign won’t keep extending and improving upon their tech. It also assumes that there wasn't other tech or aspects of their stealth that hasn’t been completed or introduced. It is hard playing catch up when the enemy isn’t particularly motivated into giving up the initiative. A lesson the Manties made painfully clear to the Havenites.

The thing is: the GA knows about the spider drive. It has detected some elements of it. Dr. Simoes undoubtedly knows at least something about it.

And it has an incredibly talented group of teams led by Hemphill and Foraker looking into ways to track them.

Yes, MAlign will make it better. But once the GA figures it out they can take action. Without the drive (and it seems clear that the ships had to go slowly in order to stay hidden...that means that if they really move they'll be more "visible" on instruments)
as a real difference, MAlign could suffer.

Even worse, if one ship gets captured, the GA engineers will have all the info they'd need. Plus the GA R&D folk on both sides have been really working for generations. Likely they can surpass the MAlign.

Oyster Bay was designed to shatter Manticore's navy and production system. It was a "one of." Now Manticore is rebuilding and it has Haven and Beowulf joining it and Grayson.

I would guess MAlign would keep away from dealing much with the navies of the GA. Right now they need time, quiet time, to grow.

ldwechsler wrote:The thing is: the GA knows about the spider drive. It has detected some elements of it. Dr. Simoes undoubtedly knows at least something about it.

And it has an incredibly talented group of teams led by Hemphill and Foraker looking into ways to track them.

Yes, MAlign will make it better. But once the GA figures it out they can take action. Without the drive (and it seems clear that the ships had to go slowly in order to stay hidden...that means that if they really move they'll be more "visible" on instruments)
as a real difference, MAlign could suffer.

Even worse, if one ship gets captured, the GA engineers will have all the info they'd need. Plus the GA R&D folk on both sides have been really working for generations. Likely they can surpass the MAlign.

Oyster Bay was designed to shatter Manticore's navy and production system. It was a "one of." Now Manticore is rebuilding and it has Haven and Beowulf joining it and Grayson.

I would guess MAlign would keep away from dealing much with the navies of the GA. Right now they need time, quiet time, to grow.

The speed limitation isn't stealth, it's a limitation of the grav plates, and to a lesser extent, the spider drive iself. The spider does not work with a Compensator (comps require wedges to use as a sump to dump forces into), instead it uses Gravplates (like forts) to limit the forces on the crew. The Malign has developed an advanced Grav plate that provides 100 Gs in a shirt sleeve environment, 150 under battle conditions. The Spider drive in a Grav Torpedo can pull 250Gs, and the larger the spider emplacement, the higher the attainable acceleration, but Human crewed ships are limited by the Grav plates.

ldwechsler wrote:The thing is: the GA knows about the spider drive. It has detected some elements of it. Dr. Simoes undoubtedly knows at least something about it.

And it has an incredibly talented group of teams led by Hemphill and Foraker looking into ways to track them.

Yes, MAlign will make it better. But once the GA figures it out they can take action. Without the drive (and it seems clear that the ships had to go slowly in order to stay hidden...that means that if they really move they'll be more "visible" on instruments)
as a real difference, MAlign could suffer.

I think you're being way too optimistic. The Malign can't detect the spider drive without getting extremely close. And the Malign actually has access to the spider drive for testing and knows the principles on which it works. A crack team led by Hemphill and Foraker trying to come up with ways to track the spider drive is pointless unless they actually manage to make a spider drive.

ldwechsler wrote:I would guess MAlign would keep away from dealing much with the navies of the GA. Right now they need time, quiet time, to grow.

This is very true. Honestly, Darius just needs a generation or two to work on its little bio-singularity ramp up its numbers and production and acquire military and technological superiority.

I also think that some RF nations (maybe Visgoth) should set up a trade pact with Manticore and Haven. You know for mutual investment and stuff. In particular, invest in news corps in Talbot and Sillyland. News corps for all sides of political issues. Fair and balanced news corps. Right wing, left wing. Pro-manty, anti-manty. Pro-crown, anti-crown! Take all sides of the issues!

Then in 50 years when representation at the empire level is by population, they'll have taken all sides of the issues and their infiltrator families will be ready to ascend to political power. Then they start playing games with government subsidies, jobs and taxes to slash voting rights for the demographics that opposed them, while rewarding the demographics that support them.

Alternatively, Darius can just send out a bunch of drones to start an attack run on all the GA planets at the same time. Start from a light year out and slowly crawl in over 5 years. Planets are too hard to protect in Honorverse. What are they going to do in response? Nuke Mesa again? (Technically for the first time, but no one will actually believe them.)

If Darius times it right they can probably frame someone the GA is having conflicts with.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:The thing is: the GA knows about the spider drive. It has detected some elements of it. Dr. Simoes undoubtedly knows at least something about it.

And it has an incredibly talented group of teams led by Hemphill and Foraker looking into ways to track them.

Yes, MAlign will make it better. But once the GA figures it out they can take action. Without the drive (and it seems clear that the ships had to go slowly in order to stay hidden...that means that if they really move they'll be more "visible" on instruments)
as a real difference, MAlign could suffer.

I think you're being way too optimistic. The Malign can't detect the spider drive without getting extremely close. And the Malign actually has access to the spider drive for testing and knows the principles on which it works. A crack team led by Hemphill and Foraker trying to come up with ways to track the spider drive is pointless unless they actually manage to make a spider drive.

ldwechsler wrote:I would guess MAlign would keep away from dealing much with the navies of the GA. Right now they need time, quiet time, to grow.

This is very true. Honestly, Darius just needs a generation or two to work on its little bio-singularity ramp up its numbers and production and acquire military and technological superiority.

I also think that some RF nations (maybe Visgoth) should set up a trade pact with Manticore and Haven. You know for mutual investment and stuff. In particular, invest in news corps in Talbot and Sillyland. News corps for all sides of political issues. Fair and balanced news corps. Right wing, left wing. Pro-manty, anti-manty. Pro-crown, anti-crown! Take all sides of the issues!

Then in 50 years when representation at the empire level is by population, they'll have taken all sides of the issues and their infiltrator families will be ready to ascend to political power. Then they start playing games with government subsidies, jobs and taxes to slash voting rights for the demographics that opposed them, while rewarding the demographics that support them.

Alternatively, Darius can just send out a bunch of drones to start an attack run on all the GA planets at the same time. Start from a light year out and slowly crawl in over 5 years. Planets are too hard to protect in Honorverse. What are they going to do in response? Nuke Mesa again? (Technically for the first time, but no one will actually believe them.)

If Darius times it right they can probably frame someone the GA is having conflicts with.

Somehow the MAlign suddenly has all the good scientists and engineers. We've been told for quite a few books how great their genetics are but aside from making some slaves really pretty and others very strong...things that the GA is doing anyway in a more legal way, there is not a real lot of progress.

Yes, over 500 years they've developed a cool tool for assassination, a secret drive and a really fast one.

But take a look at what both Hemphill and Foraker have done. Their teams are damned good. And Beowulf will be adding a bit in as well.

It may be difficult to spot the Spider drive. But if it is not impossible (and we have been told that) some tech person will figure out a good way to detect it.

Even worse for the MAlign is that someone might figure out how to do the drive or, even trickier, find another propulsion method even more invisible. If that happens, ships with that drive could follow spider drive ones "home" and if Manticore and Grayson find out they are at Darius...there just might be an Eridani violation.