Safehold vs Gbaba

So, when does Safehold start developing sensors to look for Gbaba ships?

Does Owl have knowledge to help detect Gbaba ships?

How far along does Safehold's technology have to be before they have to worry about Gbaba becoming interested?

Anyone?

sonex wrote:So, when does Safehold start developing sensors to look for Gbaba ships?

Does Owl have knowledge to help detect Gbaba ships?

How far along does Safehold's technology have to be before they have to worry about Gbaba becoming interested?

Anyone?

OWL was originally a tactical computer, so I'd be astonished if he didn't know how to detect Gbaba ships. With blueprints and diagrams, most likely. As a former naval tactical officer, both Merlin and Nimue are likely to know a thing or two about finding the Gbaba, as well.

It's unlikely that modern Safehold has to worry about the Gbaba detecting their tech, since from what the author has said at various conventions, the Gbaba destroy any race that crosses their borders, but ignore anything outside those borders. The danger for Safehold was the Gbaba sweeping for escaped human colonies - and the estimate was that if Safehold didn't produce any detectable electronic emissions for three hundred years, the Gbaba would assume they'd found all the colonies.

The likelihood now is not that the Gbaba detects Safehold- it's that Safeholdians go looking for the Gbaba.

Its obvious there are still the Terran Federation warships and transports from their original escape unless they were sent out system or into the sun. One of these would likely be able blow the orbital bombardment system to dust bunnies unless they are inside the same orbital defenses and out of reach of Merlin. Nimue is likely still on computer access and wouldnt need a spacesuit probably. Or the ships got sent somewhere other than where Langhorn and his ilk expected.

I would expect since the Gbaba didnt find the Terran Empire long range detection is likely by old fashioned radio astronomy and closer up may be whatever disturbance is generated by FTL flight.

Just finished Fiery Trials and looking forward to the next book.

Wcress wrote:Its obvious there are still the Terran Federation warships and transports from their original escape unless they were sent out system or into the sun. One of these would likely be able blow the orbital bombardment system to dust bunnies unless they are inside the same orbital defenses and out of reach of Merlin. Nimue is likely still on computer access and wouldnt need a spacesuit probably. Or the ships got sent somewhere other than where Langhorn and his ilk expected.

I would expect since the Gbaba didnt find the Terran Empire long range detection is likely by old fashioned radio astronomy and closer up may be whatever disturbance is generated by FTL flight.

Texted is that the ships were dropped into th sun when they were no longer required. There is some evidence that the command ship Hamicar was not so disposed of.

There is concern that transmissions from the planet might be radiated into space and draw the attention of the Gbaba. But that's not a concern at present in the books.

The Arc fleet deliberately went well out of their way to not only be far beyond the Gbaba's borders but also into a part of space that the TF had not previously explored. There was no plausible reason for the GBaba to even look that way. With a thousand years, plus some, since the destruction of the last human ships it's entirely plausible that the Gbaba won't be at all aware of Safehold.

Proper EMCOM, once the OBS is out of the way, can allow Safehold to develop the entire system's resources and build directly into TF tech levels before they spread out away from Gbaba space to continue growing carefully into a force which can take on the Gbaba and win.

I would suspect that once Owl has access to the satellites and such left behind he'll be able to monitor for Gbaba activities. As far as tech goes, they need to move right on into electricity and onward to TF levels, but there is some belief that any radiating level of technology has the potential to draw Gbaba attention.

Fireflair wrote:There is concern that transmissions from the planet might be radiated into space and draw the attention of the Gbaba. But that's not a concern at present in the books.

Well, it matters only for a relatively small sphere of light horizon, limited by the speed of light. And interstellar space is big, aftet all. A 400-500 Ly sphere would actually be quite tiny.

Wcress wrote:Its obvious there are still the Terran Federation warships and transports from their original escape unless they were sent out system or into the sun. One of these would likely be able blow the orbital bombardment system to dust bunnies unless they are inside the same orbital defenses and out of reach of Merlin. Nimue is likely still on computer access and wouldn't need a spacesuit probably. Or the ships got sent somewhere other than where Langhorn and his ilk expected.

All but one of the ships used by Operation Ark were dropped into the local sun. The exception was Hamilcar, Langhorne's command ship, which was also a major industrial facility, capable of producing pretty much anything desired. (The OBS was built aboard and deployed from it.)

It was visible in Safehold's sky from the Creation through the War Against the Fallen, but the colonists didn't know what it was. They called it the Dawn Star, and thought it was a divine artifact. At the end of the War Against the Fallen, the "servitors" used against the Fallen withdrew to it, and it disappeared form Safehold skies. Precisely where it disappeared to is a matter of some interest.

I would expect since the Gbaba didn't find the Terran Empire long range detection is likely by old fashioned radio astronomy and closer up may be whatever disturbance is generated by FTL flight.

I doubt the first. It's pretty clear Earth's sun isn't even visible in Safehold's sky, and radio astronomy gear capable of picking up emissions from Safehold's surface from wherever the Gbaba are is unlikely. (And why would they even be looking in that direction?)

The concern was crewed Gbaba sweeps for some distance in all directions to make sure they had destroyed humanity when they found and savaged Earth. Gbaba scouts that actually sniffed around the Safehold system were the worry, so let's not do anything they might detect.

FTL is thornier. RFC has not provided details on how FTL works in the Safehold universe, save that it is achieved by entering hyperspace where C is not a speed limit. One question is whether a ship in hyper can detect another ship in hyper, and if so, at what distance? Another is footprints of vessels entering and leaving hyper. In the Honorverse, entering hyper doesn't leave huge traces, but leaving it does, and ships bleed off enormous amounts of energy in the form of grav pulses. "Surprise attacks" on naval forces are a challenge, because the target can see you coming light years out, and grav pulses travel faster than light.

We can assume Nimue and Owl will know Gbaba ships if they appear. We don't know what would be used to detect them or how far away that can be done.
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Dennis

If you talking about how the Gbaba originally found the Terran Federation, David Weber has said that the Gbaba had visited the area of Space that the TF once was long before humans had left Earth (when they destroyed at least one Alien Civilization).

From what David Weber said, the Gbaba left listening posts in that region of Space that Terran space travel triggered.

Wcress wrote:Its obvious there are still the Terran Federation warships and transports from their original escape unless they were sent out system or into the sun. One of these would likely be able blow the orbital bombardment system to dust bunnies unless they are inside the same orbital defenses and out of reach of Merlin. Nimue is likely still on computer access and wouldnt need a spacesuit probably. Or the ships got sent somewhere other than where Langhorn and his ilk expected.

I would expect since the Gbaba didnt find the Terran Empire long range detection is likely by old fashioned radio astronomy and closer up may be whatever disturbance is generated by FTL flight.

DMcCunney wrote: One question is whether a ship in hyper can detect another ship in hyper, and if so, at what distance?

Go reread OAR. One reason that the original Safehold colony needed a diversionary fleet (the one the original Nimue died in) was because a Gbaba scout was following them, but was too far away and too fast to be engaged with weapons.

So ships CAN detect and follow each other in hyper, and presumably that detection range covers much if not the entire border of a star system's limits in hyperspace. If it didn't, it should have been easy for ships to slip away without detection.

That said, "detecting a ship" and "picking out details" aren't the same thing. Hence why the diversionary fleet even worked; at the limits of hyperspace detection, the Gbaba scout couldn't tell that the individual ships it was seeing were in fact TWO ships flying close together. A momentary break in sensor contact allowed the refugee ships to separate from the decoy ships and go hide in normal space while the decoy ships went to the Gbaba to be destroyed, thus fooling the Gbaba into thinking they killed all the ships because the ship destruction count matched the number they saw leaving the Solar System.

The impression I get is that Safehold hyperspace works very much like Honorverse hyperspace, minus the grav currents and grav sails that use them and what not.