BEOWULF - THE KARMA SUITSYA

Jonathan_S wrote:

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Though if you really want a max transit it looks like you could fit 1,080 Rolands into the mass ceiling of each bridge of the Junction.

Ironically, both Solutions (1080 Rolands or 17 Gryphons) endanger similar #s of sailors - ~68000 on the Rolands, or ~76500 on the Gryphons

I would take a roughly shipformed and big enough asteroid, make a big hole in it's core, put as much firepower as I can into the hole and some sail generators and the required support structure on or near the surface of the asteroid. The sails bring you through the transit, the asteroid rock puts an additional layer of passive defense around your ships - you can use it as a kind of reactive armor, if you want - and you can get your people safely through the main defense line.

If you survive very long, after you're clear of your transport asteroid - that's a different question, but if you only want your vessels and the people inside them safely through a defended wormhole-terminus or junction - that's my solution.

With a touch of clever programming, cm's should be usable.

Just launch them with delayed activation. Just long enough so they're clear of the eddies when they bring their wedges up.

Possibly limited to forward tubes at first but ...

Annachie wrote:With a touch of clever programming, cm's should be usable.

Just launch them with delayed activation. Just long enough so they're clear of the eddies when they bring their wedges up.

Possibly limited to forward tubes at first but ...

My understanding is that anything material that isn’t stabilized by at least one sail gets rapidly torn apart by the grav forces of the exit lane eddy. So I think that delayed launch CMs wouldn’t survive long enough to coast clear auto light then drives.

You can use laserheads to attack transiting ships because their standoff range, 30k - 50k, lets the missiles and warheads stay outside the grav forces, with only the lasers crossing into it.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Annachie wrote:With a touch of clever programming, cm's should be usable.

Just launch them with delayed activation. Just long enough so they're clear of the eddies when they bring their wedges up.

Possibly limited to forward tubes at first but ...

My understanding is that anything material that isn’t stabilized by at least one sail gets rapidly torn apart by the grav forces of the exit lane eddy. So I think that delayed launch CMs wouldn’t survive long enough to coast clear auto light then drives.

You can use laserheads to attack transiting ships because their standoff range, 30k - 50k, lets the missiles and warheads stay outside the grav forces, with only the lasers crossing into it.

Honor mused whilst in her runabout on the way to Blackbird, about the stars red shifting as the light from them was affected by the wedge, if that is the case what affect would the grav waves eddies in the exit lane have on the beams from the laserheads?

Jonathan_S wrote:
You can use laserheads to attack transiting ships because their standoff range, 30k - 50k, lets the missiles and warheads stay outside the grav forces, with only the lasers crossing into it.

Yes. I’m pretty sure an active impeller drive will not protect anything in a grav wave.

If Beowulf didn't know for a fact that they were committing a grievous error in judgement when they ratted the SLN out, then why did they use a black back channel? They made what amounts to an anonymous call from a payphone.

They probably even called collect.

cthia wrote:If Beowulf didn't know for a fact that they were committing a grievous error in judgement when they ratted the SLN out, then why did they use a black back channel? They made what amounts to an anonymous call from a payphone.

They probably even called collect.

There are a lot of backchannel things going on. The Mandarins do it as well.

Some of the things done are done because of good reasons. Did the Christians who saved Jews during the Holocaust by hiding them commit a sin?

The problem is that time has created a sort of legitimacy on the Mandarins. There is no right or wrong except as they say it.

George J. Smith wrote:Honor mused whilst in her runabout on the way to Blackbird, about the stars red shifting as the light from them was affected by the wedge, if that is the case what affect would the grav waves eddies in the exit lane have on the beams from the laserheads?

Wedges block any know weapon including lasers. But they seem to be much more concentrated grav shear than the grav wave eddies from a wormhole. We certainly know that energy combat is possible within a normal grav wave. And given how quickly Harvest Joy was destroyed, and the description on Junction defenses, it seems the same is true for termini grav eddies.

So transiting attackers can use (and be targeted by) energy mounts. But defensive forts should be far enough back that they’re out of effective energy range - at least against sidewalls. So the attacker’s ability to user their lasers and grasers should be irrelevant.

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Remember the song played by the British at Yorktown? "The world turned upside down?"

As an aside: I don't think we did play that - it would have been an extremely insulting and pretty stupid tune to play when we were supposed to be surrendering.

I remember reading in what was supposedly a responsible history book that that what was played.

And it does seem appropriate. A British army surrendering to some colonials must have seemed like the world turning upside down. It wasn't supposed to happen!
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The name of the song comes down through history and tradition with at least one written description of the event done years later.
On the other hand what the British forces in general and the leadership in particular were thinking at that point is open to a lot of speculation beyond being beaten and humiliated.
General O'Hara intialy tried to surrender to the French, approching Rochambeau- who directed O'Hara to surrender to Washington (that rankled) who directed O'Hara to actualy surrender to Get. LIncoln- upon whom Cornwallis had imposed humiliating terms of surrender at Charleston (which rankled even more). Nothing in that scene off-hand. That was fighting on a diplomatic and political stage. It was all deliberate
That would seem to indicate at least the possibility that they now considered the war to have shifted from a rebelion of colonies to yet another round in a very long cycle of wars with their old enemy France. If nothing elce, it was an attempt to deflect the loss to what was considered little better than a mob of farmers, merchants and the lower classes by saying that the real foe had been France all along and this wasn't the end of it. It certainly puts a better face on it for the loosers.
Without trying to recap the war, France had started early on selling arms and supplies to the American Colonies and, after the American victory at Saratoga jumped in with both feet and by both declaring war on Britain and sending an army as well as just giving the supplies to the Americans. Britain was suddenly actively engaged at places around the world both by the French and then other countries as more came in openly on the American side of the conflict. A wild guess would put the tune more as some political slap at the French. Sadly, nobody thought to or at least nobody wrote down why the song was chosen.

Well, "the American Side" is probably a simplistic view of it. This was a chance and opportunity to reconfigure global positions, trade and power after the end of the Seven Years War. All sorts of people were grabbing islands, trade centers, now openly raiding British commerce (and taking on British warships) litteraly around the world.
The Treaty of Paris doesn't wind up negotiations till 1783 and for quite a bit of that time the Crown wasn't talking directly to the American Commission at all- everything officialy had to go through the French. The French were quite happy to rub Britian's nose in all of this and Britain was taking the position that it was the French who had beaten them- not those colonists who were only still alive because the French Empire. The treaty terms spend a lot of words on formal assignment of places and things like fishing rights to entities other than the "United States" and Britain. Islands in the Caribbean, in the East Indies, territory and concessions in India, all sorts of places. Resetting the board in centuries of economic completion, territorial aquistion and outright warfare.
Behavior at the surrender also carried a lot more depth than the later writings about the emotion discribed with some of the Crown troops. Quite a bit of the discussions about the terms of the surrender was what would be allowed as far as the Hornors of War granted to the British forces. They were not happy but did get some concessions. Lots of, not so much posturing, as insistance on making a good showing and being treated well in Europeran traditions of Honor after having fought well. They marched out with cassed colors some of that didn't go as planned although happened strictly in form as agreed. They insisted that the colors be surrender to officers- status and honor and perception of treatment. So what happens when they get to where the massed colors are to be surrendered? They are handed to a set of American junior officers -who immediatly turn around and hand the colors to Sargents. For the time period, this is essentilay saying, these people fought without honor and their standards are just trash. Nothing simple about that surrender at all.