Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

Jonathan_S wrote:If you can't tell the wormhole's bearing well enough to know it's more likely headed towards (than away from) a couple hundred LY wide target that's also your largest source of additional shipping revenue then I don't think there's any chance of using the entry vector information to practically narrow the search space for the other end of the Torch wormhole.

Even if you could tell it's within a 5° cone and the distance within +/- 50 light years, that still gives you a huge number of stars to search at.

Let's say it's 400 ± 50 light-years. A cone has a volume of πr²(h/3), so if calculate the volume of the cone with a height of 450 light years and subtract that of a cone of 350 light-years, we get the volume to be searched: 11146 pc³. At a density of 0.14 stars per cubic parsec, that's 1560 stars, most of which are M-type and definitely could be the terminus.

Brigade XO wrote:Something I can't remember: does the inbound lane vector on a wormhole give ANY indication of the direction of the terminus for that bridge of the wormhole?

If it does, then it is possible that you might send a couple of ships out on that vector in hyperspace and stop near any star that is within X distance of the vector. Yeah, you would have to take astronomical observations at each point you came out of hyperspace to see what might be at each star and then hunt around to see if you can find a terminus.
I said a couple of ships because sending one ship and having it run into any kind of blocking force that noticed it's downward transition from hyperspace could be in serious trouble. Even if the GA doesn't know how that Alighment drive works, they have to figure that popping out of hyperspace near a place those ships frequent is likely to draw trouble quickly.
Yes, this approach- if it can be used- is going to take quite a while. Still more survivable than taking that trip through the wormhole.

Imagine how many stars we would be talking about. Even if you can get an exact bearing the WH could go hundreds of light years which could be tens of thousands of systems to check.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
That only works if there's a chance of success. The GA, especially both Manticore and Haven, know very well how a wormhole can be protected against transits and what it would take to break through (if anything at all). If they don't think there's even a remote chance of success, they're not going to sanction such an action, even crewed entirely by volunteers.

A crew of rogue volunteers could try it on its own.

Personally, I think the only two ways are to either find Felix by way of digging through intel, or a technological breakthrough.

There is a chance of success, its most likely not heavily fortified if at all but protected by a handful of ships. Harvest Joy was a CA but also a survey ship expecting no problems, it wouldn't have taken heavy fortifications to destroy the ship. Manticore and Haven know that a WH assault is a death sentence against massive and well prepared defences but the other end of the Torch WH would likely not be heavily defended unless it happened to be in a main MA base. Putting forts, mines and missile pods to defend the WH would require a significant investment for a WH no one knows is important and heavy fortifications plus having the ships in the region maintaining the defences seems like a major security risk. I don't know how long a mine or a pod can stay in space but I assume that at some point it needs to be brought in for maintenance or inspection which would add a lot of potential avenues of discovery.

If the GA comes to the conclusion that the other end of the WH brings them closer to the MA who murdered 70+ million GA citizens and tens or hundreds of millions of innocent people in other nations they will push through a raid. The idea here is not for them to assault the system but for them to get as many targets as possible on the other end of the WH and escape with the location. They don't have to fight when they get there and they don't have to stick around for long, all they need to do is get out as fast as they can and after OB I doubt the RMN and GSN would be short on volunteers.

You've got layer after layer of assumption there.

First, that it isn't just suicide. It's established fact that there is at leas one WH that NOBODY has ever returned from. So how do you KNOW that isn't he case?

Second, that the defenses are not enough to make it suicidal. If it goes to a system that the MA controls it will be sufficiently heavily fortified that any force you can transit is going to be very unlikely to survive the minutes of being bombarded by the fixed defenses. So why would you imagine it goes somewhere where they can't place blatant fixed defenses?

Third, the assumption that they can't maintain defenses is pretty absurd. These are the guys with dozens of invisible, undetectable 4 MT ships. How are you going to detect them performing defense maintenance? And if you can, how do you propose that you survive getting to a light second away from a grazer armed invisible BB controlling a giant field of stealthy missile pods? Unlike the MA, YOU are not undetectable further out than 1 LS.

Basically, if you have the information to determine that you can possibly realistically overload the defenses it also almost certainly comes with the location of the far end, so you don't need to do that.

As far as defending a wormhole from ships comming out of a transit, all you really need is one ship at general quarters and weapons hot.
Ok, a DD isn't going to cut it if a squadron of BC's come through in a mass transit but that also probably holds true against an SD. On the other hand, the Mannerheim SDF crusier squadron was overkill for one older CL that had been retrofitted as a wormhole research/explorer and who wasn't comming through with weapons hot nor expcting a point blank ambush.

Remember that we are talking the Alignment here. They can litteraly grow the crews they need. At this point- and for at least a couple of decades- they can have bought any number of used SLN warships and retrofitted them specifically for a wormhole denial mission. Using the Mannerheim cruisers was probably the most expedient method of securing the Twin's end of the Torch-Twins bridge, at least until they corrected the oversight of not having put something there before they lost "Verdant Vista".

The only reason you would want to use ships rather than some variation of terminus fort is getting the ships there in the first place. At the very least- if you were building conventional (non-Spider drive) ships at Darious- is it is going to be two wormhole transits to the take their positions at the Twin's end of the wormhole. If you aquire them somewhere else, recondition and upgrade them to the mission specs (at least 1st generation Cataphracts plus controling pods) it will probably be more though you would need to be carefull what wormholes you took them through to get them to Felix.
Think the whole plan with Monica, obviously the Alignment could have done that with other ships. The key would be having the refurbishment done. They did it with the former PRH warships that they used to attack Torch.

Even a SLN SD (if any were sold off/"scrapped") would work as it isn't going to have to absorb fire from ships that have just come thought the wormhole and are effectivly blind and have now wedge etc. Of course, crewing one SD would take a lot more people than several up to BC sized ships and a force that could lay and maintain minefields.

How long would it take to train the people needed to maintain such a force on that wormhole and set up the logistics chain to support it. Less than a couple of years. The Alignment isn't worried about throwing 10,000 people at this type of job. Even if they used Mannerheim SDF crews to transport the ships into the shadow network and train the crews that were organized from Darius it shouldn't make a dent in the Alignment workforce. Their general workforce on Darius isn't going anywhere and can be brought along as the type of specilaist techs to man the guardships and any facilities needed near the terminus. You don't have to train them to be navigators (and probably don't want to do that or train them to pilot the ships in wormhole transits) you just want loyal worker/tech line crew that will maintain & operate the ships.

They have ONE job. Destroy anything that comes through that wormhole without prior arrangement or some possible signal that an incomming ship could transmit to let it survive till it could be boarded to confirm it was one of theirs- which isn't likely to happen much. For the next few years, it is going to be shoot first and inspect any wreckage later.

This thread needs a split:
Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt Or Stop O.B.II
and
How to traverse a WH defended by hostiles.

Dispersing: Prolly not unless you have a hidden Bolthole
The thing to do is make your ship-building stations MOBILE so that they're not located predictably.
System traffic control can direct you to the right place.
Alt: build everything on the ground and grav-plate it to orbit.

Penetrating a guarded-by-hostiles WH:
Two ships, tractored/bolted/welded together cross-wise. A tug pulls/pushes you onto the intercept vector, your thrusters provide the tweaks to align perfectly.
The "Longwise" ship has hot nodes, configured for sail. When you're in the sweet spot, turn sails on. You go through.
The "Crosswise" ship also has hot nodes configured for wedge, but no wedge up.
Upon appearing in the Hot LZ, a QUICK look for incoming missiles, and if there are any the Crosswise ship goes into Hyper (taking the Longwise ship with it).
If you're in a gravity wave, the Longwise ship still has its sails up. If not, the Crosswise ship is ready to engage wedge and beat feet outta there.
Getting home is tedious, but simple; and you've taken a spectroscopic snapshot of the area to determine where you are. Off you go home.

It takes minutes to get out of the grav zone of the WH after you exit the wh. And that assumes it is surveyed. I have no idea how long it takes to find the egress lane on a new wh, or how survivable it is trying to exit without following the egress lane.

So you are going to get shot to pieces no matter how you do it if there is anyone there who wishes to shoot at you.

kzt wrote:You've got layer after layer of assumption there.

First, that it isn't just suicide. It's established fact that there is at leas one WH that NOBODY has ever returned from. So how do you KNOW that isn't he case?

You cant determine it is a suicide mission unless you know what's on the other end either. It could very well be that Harvest Joy was damaged or destroyed by a freak accident that had nothing to do with enemy action or a natural event. Or they could have been destroyed by a small picket that overwhelmed the lone CA. If there are 50 WH in the known galaxy and 1 of them leads to an unknown location this might be number 2 but chances are good that it is not, especially when you consider who previously owned the system.

Second, that the defenses are not enough to make it suicidal. If it goes to a system that the MA controls it will be sufficiently heavily fortified that any force you can transit is going to be very unlikely to survive the minutes of being bombarded by the fixed defenses. So why would you imagine it goes somewhere where they can't place blatant fixed defenses?

Again if the potential reward is great enough the risk might be worthwhile. The WH might very well be in an MA controlled system that is heavily fortified or it might not, sending ships to find out might be their only way to discover the location of the other end.

Third, the assumption that they can't maintain defenses is pretty absurd. These are the guys with dozens of invisible, undetectable 4 MT ships. How are you going to detect them performing defense maintenance? And if you can, how do you propose that you survive getting to a light second away from a grazer armed invisible BB controlling a giant field of stealthy missile pods? Unlike the MA, YOU are not undetectable further out than 1 LS.

Even a small WH would have a large area that would need more then a couple of hundred missile pods, probably more into the thousands if not tens of thousands. Those pods will need regular maintenance if they are left on station permanently they will need maintenance and I wouldn't be using my invisible ships to maintain missile pods as they would be too busy in the up coming war I just started with the GA. My thinking goes down the path that Manpower had control of a system with a WH, if it was leading to a truly important system they would have done everything humanly possible to not draw attention to the WH or the system by putting a whole bunch of slaves on the planet. If it was truly important the GA wouldn't know about it, but if it were harmless manpower would have surveyed it and utilized it. So it sits in the area of being important enough to the MA which has been using Manpower as cover for centuries to not utilize it to keep the other end a secret but not important enough to cover up the existence of the WH. If it falls in that area it might not be that heavily defended.

Basically, if you have the information to determine that you can possibly realistically overload the defenses it also almost certainly comes with the location of the far end, so you don't need to do that.

And sometimes even if you don't know the reward is still worth the risk. The US send a suicide mission to Japan in 1942 in the form of the Doolittle Raid, sure they had plans on getting to safety but they didn't know what they would be facing, 16 bombers against no fighters or maybe against thousands of fighters. The US military risked the lives of 80 men of the raiding party and thousands of sailors, marines and airmen in the task force that brought the bombers just because they needed a moral boost and a symbolic victory over Japan. They risked 2 carriers and at least a dozen other ships for a moral boost after Japan killed a thousands of Americans, imagine what kind of motivation the GA has when they lost 43,000,000 people at Beowulf most of them being civilians, as well as 13,000,000 at Manticore during OB and probably half that number in Grayson. When you tally their losses, sending a handful of manned ships along with enough decoys and risk a total of 500-600 people and some front line ships along with the useless decoys seems like an acceptable risk if the reward might be bringing the GA closer to the MA. Hell after so many people died from Manticore, Grayson and Beowulf I would think realistically you would be able to find 10X the number of volunteers from each service alone.

A couple of dozen LACs were able to cover a WH. Why would i need thousands of pods?

Sigs wrote:And sometimes even if you don't know the reward is still worth the risk. The US send a suicide mission to Japan in 1942 in the form of the Doolittle Raid, sure they had plans on getting to safety but they didn't know what they would be facing, 16 bombers against no fighters or maybe against thousands of fighters. The US military risked the lives of 80 men of the raiding party and thousands of sailors, marines and airmen in the task force that brought the bombers just because they needed a moral boost and a symbolic victory over Japan. They risked 2 carriers and at least a dozen other ships for a moral boost after Japan killed a thousands of Americans, imagine what kind of motivation the GA has when they lost 43,000,000 people at Beowulf most of them being civilians, as well as 13,000,000 at Manticore during OB and probably half that number in Grayson. When you tally their losses, sending a handful of manned ships along with enough decoys and risk a total of 500-600 people and some front line ships along with the useless decoys seems like an acceptable risk if the reward might be bringing the GA closer to the MA. Hell after so many people died from Manticore, Grayson and Beowulf I would think realistically you would be able to find 10X the number of volunteers from each service alone.

However the risk of the Doolittle raid wasn't anywhere near as high as what you're proposing. Enterprise and Hornet were ready to abandon the raid and retreat at high speed if they were detected and the chance that a Japanese carrier force would be in exactly the right place to chase them down on that retreat is pretty low.

As it was they launched earlier than planned because it was sighted by a picket boat. They were just barely within range so they launched the bombers as quickly as possible and retreated at high speed.

So while there was some risk (even well escorted carriers can run into the sights of a submarine) they were taking evasive routing and ready to run the moment they were seen - so the risk was relatively low.