Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

Jonathan_S wrote:

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.

Another point, the Doolittle raid had known objectives, known risks, and known return paths (if possible)

The Torch wormhole is a total unknown. If the RMN knew it was the connector to the Malign's wormhole network and homeworld, then I can see a suicide mission. But as far as they know it's just another killer wormhole . Remember - there was no record of Manpower or Mesa every using the wormhole, only rumors that it was a junction. Who doesn't try to exploit a wormhole - almost every one has "SOME" commercial value. The killer aspect alone could have described why the Torch wormhole was never exploited.

So at this point, any suicide mission would just be seen as ... total waste.

The Torch wormhole is a total unknown. If the RMN knew it was the connector to the Malign's wormhole network and homeworld, then I can see a suicide mission. But as far as they know it's just another killer wormhole . Remember - there was no record of Manpower or Mesa every using the wormhole, only rumors that it was a junction. Who doesn't try to exploit a wormhole - almost every one has "SOME" commercial value. The killer aspect alone could have described why the Torch wormhole was never exploited.

So at this point, any suicide mission would just be seen as ... total waste.

I want to know, what afford has Manpower made to explore the wormhole! Are there any documents about sensor probes buyed for data collection, Letters to solarian wormhole scientist to hire them for exploration etc.

If there are documents, then it looks okay, Manpower had try to find a way to open the wormhole to make money with it, but if there are NO documents, then it would be very suspicios.

Maldorian wrote:I want to know, what afford has Manpower made to explore the wormhole! Are there any documents about sensor probes buyed for data collection, Letters to solarian wormhole scientist to hire them for exploration etc.

If there are documents, then it looks okay, Manpower had try to find a way to open the wormhole to make money with it, but if there are NO documents, then it would be very suspicios.

There appear to be no documents, at least none that have been turned up so far. What they may find now in Mesa is unknown and can change the situation considerably.

So yes, it's suspicious. But it's hard to make an inference as to what was being hidden. All they known is that there were a lot of rumours (many of each easily disproven), no records of transit and the only transit they attempted resulted in the ship not returning. There's a non-negligible chance Manpower never used the wormhole because it doesn't work...

A comprehensive search of the surviving databases of Verdant Visa once it became Torch failed to turn up any mention of the wormhole, or at least any mention of research and exploration of it. That included the database(s) in the planitary command bunker that appeared to have been taken intact and was being used by Ruth, amoung other people.

Given that WE know that the Alignment had a full squadron of Mannerheim SDF parked at the Twins side of the wormhole specifialy to rotate ships up to cover the arrival lane and destroy anything that came thorough, WE (the readers) know that the Alignment knew all about the wormhole. Our best conclusion- which is something that I think Ruth also raised- was that Manpower (since she had no idea about the Alignment) deliberatly stripped any mention of the possible wormhole out of the information they had on the planet. The question was why.
She came to that conclusion based on the routine scouting of newly settled, or at least investigated star systems, to look for any indication of a wormhole relative to the star. That planet represented a major potential revenue source for Manpower- the pharmaceutical sales potential from the biosphere alone was massive. Manpower was not so strapped for resources that it wouldn't spend at least a comparitvely small amount to look for any readings that could indicate that there might be a wormhole. Manpower had, if recall correctly, reasonably good in-house charting of the Torch System so why not go to the next step? Again, if I remember correctly, there wasn't any mention- for or against even looking for a potential wormhole in all that captured data. Data that was very much in the most secure place Manpower could put a bunker on Verdant Vista. That absence of information given that the potential wormhole was quickly noticed by the new owners of Torch is one of those things that begs questioning. Something like " the intial exporation crew found no indication of any potentially valuable resources outside the local equivelenet of the Kuiper Belt and no follow up is contemplated at this time" would have been expected in the various records and pointed at nobody from Manpower thought it was worth it at the time.

If it was something specifically excluded from the records, there must be a reason.....and, then the Harvest Joy doesn't come back. But the cost of sending another ship into that wormhole appears to be too much at this point. It's not like the crew of the Harvest Joy was either inexperinced, rash (any more than any explorer may be), prone to sloppiness or just careless.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Also, I have to wonder on the risk represented by not having a wedge for defence. A huge 12 million ton ship, even if 2/3 of it is armour, is very vulnerable to a wedge. There's no known way to penetrate them and no known way to stop them, aside from another, more powerful wedge. The armour may stop lasers and grasers, but wouldn't stop the wedge. A missile that managed an actual collision could slice the ship in two.

Yup, for years I've been saying that at modern missile velocities the only reason to have a warhead is for standoff capability. Skin-to-skin and the ship dies. Furthermore, no wedge means they're vulnerable from any aspect, not just a narrow line. The attacker's job just got a lot easier. Also, note that I've been suggesting ramming as a missile tactic. Against another wedge ship it simply makes them keep their heads down (their wedge must be facing the threat which severely limits their PD lasers) but a ship without a wedge can't keep it's head down. All those EW birds have a clean shot at ramming and even if they are "killed" by a PD laser they remain deadly but ballistic and thus they can be dodged if there's enough time.

Galactic Sapper wrote:If you depend on stealth and surprise as your primary weapon, an opponent can force you to attack them by immediately moving on the planet you're defending. They may take some lumps getting there, but they're three times faster than you and once they're in orbit you either have to surrender the planet or close to combat range on their terms rather than your own, through a volume of space certain to be swarming with recon assets.

And remember that the MAlign has committed Eridani violations. The GA would be within their rights to c-frac the government center from beyond the hyper limit.

kzt wrote:Which means if you are a SD(P) who localized an LD you are basically knifefighting with a fortress-scale ship. With the defenses of a fortress and presumably also a whole bunch of deployed pods. Do you think this is going to end well?

You are, or your recon drones are???

Loren Pechtel wrote:Yup, for years I've been saying that at modern missile velocities the only reason to have a warhead is for standoff capability. Skin-to-skin and the ship dies. Furthermore, no wedge means they're vulnerable from any aspect, not just a narrow line. The attacker's job just got a lot easier. Also, note that I've been suggesting ramming as a missile tactic. Against another wedge ship it simply makes them keep their heads down (their wedge must be facing the threat which severely limits their PD lasers) but a ship without a wedge can't keep it's head down. All those EW birds have a clean shot at ramming and even if they are "killed" by a PD laser they remain deadly but ballistic and thus they can be dodged if there's enough time.

The only problem of actual ramming is the extreme velocity differential between the two objects. The missile is moving at better than 0.5c relative to the ship, which is evading. The ship is also stealthy, since it has no wedge for the missile to lock on. So it'll depend on how good the sensor heads are and how close they need to be to actually lock on. If it's too close, it may not have enough time to change course to impact.

One thing an MDM could do is make turn over between the second and third stages. It would reduce the range from 64 million km to a "mere" 50 million but it would attack at a terminal velocity of 79500 km/s (0.26c). If the detection range is 1 million km, the missile is still a full 12.6 seconds away and could impart a lateral displacement of 35000 km. That's not a lot, though, but better than come screaming in at 0.81c.

So an effective tactic might not be to overwhelm defences initially with time-on-target attack, but to fire a staggered, continuous wave so the missiles further back can come closer. Like tracking a beam of light or when one uses tracer rounds in artillery.

Galactic Sapper wrote:To throw some WAG numbers at the problem: assume the emitters are at least marginally effective out to 300k kilometers of typical energy range and shortish PD cluster range - and can be targeted accurately to that range. That gives roughly one second for a terminal velocity MDM to cross their range to get to laser head standoff range and detonate.

Assume 600-800 emitter heads per "keel" on a LD. Could be fewer, could be a LOT more; as far as I know we don't know yet. Depending on the geometry of the ship, how far the keels stick out from it, and the design tolerances of the emitter heads themselves, the ship could get one, two, or all three keels to bear on the incoming missiles

Assume each head needs 10-20 milliseconds to pulse and recalibrate to a new target locus before pulsing again. This means each emitter head can get 5-10 shots off while the missiles cross the engagement zone.

Under the lowest estimate, that means a LD could get off 3000 point defense shots in the time it takes the missiles to reach detonation range. Using the upper estimates it could be 24,000 shots from a single ship.

Even if they use redundant targeting (two emitters taking separate shots at each missile) to minimize miss percentages, under the worst case scenario you could launch an entire podnaught's missile load at a single LD only to watch it fizzle out rather than damage the enemy!

Lets figure you're "right." The LD shreds the incoming missile wave--but it dies anyway! The LD has to sit still while it's defending itself. The LD has no wedge to contend with, the missiles are running straight for it. Destroy them and the mass of the missiles is still running basically straight for it. It's going to be hit by energy in the ballpark of 2 billion times what one beam from a warhead carries (assuming the missiles are at max speed, which appears to be your assumption also)--and said beams can do damage even through a sidewall.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Lets figure you're "right." The LD shreds the incoming missile wave--but it dies anyway! The LD has to sit still while it's defending itself. The LD has no wedge to contend with, the missiles are running straight for it. Destroy them and the mass of the missiles is still running basically straight for it. It's going to be hit by energy in the ballpark of 2 billion times what one beam from a warhead carries (assuming the missiles are at max speed, which appears to be your assumption also)--and said beams can do damage even through a sidewall.

Not quite. The degree of spreading required to keep the missile salvo from destroying itself with wedge collisions would mean at most one missile would be on a direct collision course with the ship. Any closer spacing would cause the wedges to collide and the resulting energy release would vaporize both missiles.

And the one missile that could be aimed at the ship is also going to be largely vaporized by the hit that kills it. Most of the mass would miss, and the part that didn't probably isn't going to get through the ship's micrometeorite protection, which is designed to handle space dust and debris at 80% c.