Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

Yeah. And I think David said that included a 6m diameter rock at 0.8C. Which is easily going to handle the fragments of a missile.

Sigs wrote:Or extreme arrogance. They know they are the only once at the table who know there is a game, so they make some serious assumptions and make their plans to require damn near 100% of the things going right for success. The way they seem to presented in the series is smart but arrogant bunch who in many cases overcomplicate things but give no margin for error.

Yup, that's exactly what I see. They consider small-scale setbacks but are unable to consider any large scale problem. Consider how they weeded out the MAlign guys on Earth--arrest them. It took a chance discovery of one agent to reveal the suicide protocol but once your enemy knows about it it's so easy to exploit.

Loren Pechtel wrote:They consider small-scale setbacks but are unable to consider any large scale problem.

They (the SLN) do not have a budget big enough to do more than repair/reload what they now have.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:They don't want anything in Felix to indicate that there is a wormhole in the first place. A minefield might work, since it is by definition stealthy. Anyone who happens to stop in the system, like the legitimate owners, would not see it unless they happened to literally run into it. But at that point, they'd have detected the wormhole in the first place.

A minefield here would probably be built not to engage someone who runs into it.

The minefield controller monitors the wormhole and only activates the field if something comes through and doesn't squawk friendly. A passing ship won't trigger it.

ThinksMarkedly wrote: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.

It depends on how quickly a missile can change vectors.

So long as this is not a limiting factor the missile simply generates the same horizontal vector it's target generates. It has more acceleration, it will be able to match any maneuver it's target makes. The only way to defeat it is if it can't change the angle it's pointing fast enough.

While the target has no wedge to lock onto it also has no wedge to mess up the observations. It's target is one huge energy source not matched by anything else around.

Galactic Sapper wrote: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.

Make the missiles spread out in flight, then aim at the target before they enter the PD zone. Each can be aimed for impact although they will have to shut down their wedge for the very last part of their flight--going ballistic at that point won't be enough to generate a miss.

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.

Space dust is very thin. The plasma cloud of a vaporized missile packs an energy that makes even a contact nuke look like a wet firecracker.

Honorverse wormholes are basically immune from assault. I'm not sure they're immune to a probe, though:

As others have suggested, gather old ships for a maximum mass transit. No crews, no missile weapons (although the tubes may be used to throw EW devices), grasers operational. Everything is being controlled from the one manned ship involved--a dispatch boat rigged for maximum stealth that's anchored to the back of something big--it's not moving under it's own power.

The force comes through, does whatever damage it can but is of course destroyed although they attempt to avoid reactor explosions (the manned ship can jettison any reactor and the reactors are rigged to be jettisoned if things seem out of control--basically a deadman switch.)

The intent of all this is to ensure there's a lot of wreckage--and the dispatch boat is lying doggo amongst that wreckage. Once it's drifted clear it hightails it out of there.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Space dust is very thin. The plasma cloud of a vaporized missile packs an energy that makes even a contact nuke look like a wet firecracker.

Perhaps not as thin as you might think.

David Weber wrote: As far as the effectiveness of a "down-the-throat" attack on a major combatant, the particle shielding definitely would present difficulties. I'd have to run the numbers, but the particle shielding is basically designed to handle collisions with solid objects massing up to about two metric tons at velocities of up to 60% of light-speed. More massive objects can be dealt with it lower velocities, and as the velocity rises above .6c, the size of the object the system can handle goes down. There is, however, a reason warships mount massively redundant point defense to cover the bow-aspect of their wedges, and a reason besides the need to engage an enemy vessel for mounting the most powerful chase weapons possible and mounting them in multiple numbers, instead of simply settling for the biggest, nastiest spinal mount weapon you can cram in. When an object too large for the particle shielding to deal with turns up, it is automatically engaged by the ship's point defense and -- if the ship has been cleared for action -- its chase energy weapons, as well. And the fire control on those systems is designed to engage targets coming in at better than 80% of light-speed. and they're also designed to begin engaging them at ranges in excess of 200,000 kilometers. So, I doubt that you'd be able to get your warhead close enough to score a hit before detonating, even if the slug were massive enough to punch through the particle shielding in the first place. Obviously, you'd have a better shot at scoring a hit with an "up-the-kilt" shot, where the particle shielding wouldn't be a factor… except for the minor point that the after end of the ship is designed to be the forward end of the ship when the vessel is decelerating. Which means -- you guessed it -- that the stern hammerhead is equipped with exactly the same sort of massively redundant, space debris-killing energy weapons and particle shielding as the bow. So, if this sort of weapon was known to be out there, the Skipper would simply be sure that he had his particle shielding up at both ends of his wedge, and his debris-zapping armament would do the rest.

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Space dust is very thin. The plasma cloud of a vaporized missile packs an energy that makes even a contact nuke look like a wet firecracker.

Perhaps not as thin as you might think.

David Weber wrote: As far as the effectiveness of a "down-the-throat" attack on a major combatant, the particle shielding definitely would present difficulties. I'd have to run the numbers, but the particle shielding is basically designed to handle collisions with solid objects massing up to about two metric tons at velocities of up to 60% of light-speed. More massive objects can be dealt with it lower velocities, and as the velocity rises above .6c, the size of the object the system can handle goes down. There is, however, a reason warships mount massively redundant point defense to cover the bow-aspect of their wedges, and a reason besides the need to engage an enemy vessel for mounting the most powerful chase weapons possible and mounting them in multiple numbers, instead of simply settling for the biggest, nastiest spinal mount weapon you can cram in. When an object too large for the particle shielding to deal with turns up, it is automatically engaged by the ship's point defense and -- if the ship has been cleared for action -- its chase energy weapons, as well. And the fire control on those systems is designed to engage targets coming in at better than 80% of light-speed. and they're also designed to begin engaging them at ranges in excess of 200,000 kilometers. So, I doubt that you'd be able to get your warhead close enough to score a hit before detonating, even if the slug were massive enough to punch through the particle shielding in the first place. Obviously, you'd have a better shot at scoring a hit with an "up-the-kilt" shot, where the particle shielding wouldn't be a factor… except for the minor point that the after end of the ship is designed to be the forward end of the ship when the vessel is decelerating. Which means -- you guessed it -- that the stern hammerhead is equipped with exactly the same sort of massively redundant, space debris-killing energy weapons and particle shielding as the bow. So, if this sort of weapon was known to be out there, the Skipper would simply be sure that he had his particle shielding up at both ends of his wedge, and his debris-zapping armament would do the rest.

That's great and all, but how do unarmed civilian ships deal with the same debris? Even freighters would need the equivalent of Star Trek's navigational deflector arrays to survive everyday travelling.

A thought about sending a bunch of outmoded SDs though That Wormhole with a DB hidden in the mass transit to scoot away (presuming it survives a massive weapons attach and the wormhole is not actually the killer).

1st, per RFC you can't send an unmanned ship through a wormhole on automatic. You have to have crew to to make the decisions, the last second adjustments and handle the change to sails, go through and back to sails then bring up the impellers. So just maybe you could have all X obsolete SD's controlled by the SD but that might be a bit more than a non-trivial excercise.

2nd, you are talking about A DB. Otherwise a small soap bubble that is going into something that is probably going to spread multiple SDs with incomming fire. Said soap bubble is going to have to deal with all sorts of debris comming at it from exploding SDs which just might be a little hazardous to it's health.

3rd, you are talking about going through a wormhole for which you have NO IDEA where it comes out and, presuming the DB can get get up enough speed to the hell out of the powered missile envelope of whatever was waiting on top of the exit lane for the wormhole, it still needs to find it's way---home?
Well, the Harvest Joy was Star Knight heavy cruiser refitted as a survey ship to explore potential wormholes. It had a good sized crew, was optomised to both research the wormhole it was going to enter and then do the same job on the other side (to come back) plus do a very intense astro survey of wherever it found itself to discover where the wormhole lead to. And, along with the capacity to handle long term deployments with that crew, it had a lot of extra supplies on board. Why, because if you can't- for any reason- go back through the wormhole (probably because the tranist broke something you can't fix to get the sails back up) you are going to have to do it the "old fashioned way". After figuring out where you are you have to get into hyper and head for someplace you can identify before your food and environmental endurence runs out.
A DB doesn't have much room to start with and a minimal crew. It doesn't have much in the way of cargo space to begin with, mostly it carries information/dispaches and perhaps a couple of passengers (in less that palatial space and comfort).
So, with the presumption that said DB can get the hell into hyperspace -and get away from any attempted pursuit before it can be killed by whatever was camped out on the incomming lane of the wormhole, you have to next figure out both where you are and what that position is to anyplace you can get to with what you have on-board. The guy that was running the Harvest Joy's research program for the transist that ended up at the Lynx teminus (but didn't go along on the attempted transit from Torch) talked about months and months of time getting back to anywhere on a research trip where they couldn't take the ship back through. I don't think your average DB is going to handle even several months in hyperspace. Interesting idea, don't give it much chance of success.