Mousetrapping vs Apollo

Galactic Sapper wrote:The nausea isn't generally all that bad; more of an annoyance than being the sort of incapacitation that would give an enemy at huge advantage. It does vary considerably with the velocity the ship is carrying with it when it translates down, though.

If a ship has time to decelerate from the 0.6c they typically travel at in hyperspace, it puts a lot less wear on the ship and is much less unpleasant for the crew. It's common practice even for warships to decelerate some before translation, taking advantage of the fact that translating downward between bands absorbs a lot of the speed the ship has. Translating downward from say the Epsilon band, through Delta, Gamma, Beta, Alpha, then hitting normal space spreads out the energy loss and translation nausea to minimal levels by the time the ship hits normal space.

On certain occasions, however, absolutely minimizing the travel time is necessary, regardless of the cost to the ship's drives and crew. In these cases the ship will drop through hyperspace bands faster and accelerate to regain speed between drops. This is the sort of thing referred to as "crash" translations and nausea becomes a significant issue. This is the sort of thing rarely seen outside of combat scenarios where a ship is being chased or is chasing someone else.

The absolute worst case is when a ship needs to carry the absolute maximum velocity into real space: they'll drop to the Alpha band and reaccelerate back up to 0.6c before finally translating down. THAT is the sort of translation which will have your crew puking they guts out for the next several minutes and leave them less able to react to sudden threats. This is very rarely used as a surprise tactic to reach a target before defenders can react; the closest I can remember was the Icarus raid on Basilisk and even they weren't doing 0.6c when they translated.

And of course, as with everything else in life, not everyone is affected the same way or to the same extent. Even the worst translation is likely to see a few crew members affected less than everyone else, and less severe translations may still cause a few crew members to regret breakfast.

Funny you mentioned coming in carrying the maximum velocity, and I'm glad you explained it because I was thinking a ship could use that tactic as a head start on any possible ship planning to mousetrap it?

Of the three terms: translating, jumping and hypering. Why didn't the author reserve "jumping" exclusively for the junctions, like Stargate-SG1 and everyone else who goes through a wormhole? Since our brains have already been trained for that.

I need to reread it again, so please pardon the question, but I didn't think a ship could see what's going on in n-space from hyper, but both Tourville and Honor was waiting for the other shoe to drop, as if they were watching the action. Plus, Honor was entering the action from the junction. (I'm going to re-read that section now.)

A. How close to the limit is Astro Control? And, is it inside or outside the limit? I thought it was way outside. But I remember reading that everything worth defending is inside the limit.

B Ditto, the Forts.

Ok, the Wiki says 7 light-hours from Manticore-A.

locarno24 wrote:If you want the hyper limit to be a 'drop dead' value where jumping suddenly becomes impossible, then it makes sense it wouldn't be a linear equation producing the radius anyway, since you'd want the hyper limit to be generated by a 'tending to 0' or 'tending to infinity' hyperbola.

Or, more formally . . .

lim f ()
x→Ø, ∞

As x approaches Ø, ∞.



PS.

Locarno, I haven't had a chance to enjoy Babylon 5 yet, but my brother gave me the full series on DVD. He, and many others here in the forum seem to be big Babylonians.

cthia wrote:I haven't had a chance to enjoy Babylon 5 yet, but my bother gave me the full series on DVD. He, and many here in the forum seem to be big Babylonians.

If you get the chance to watch it you really should. it was pretty ground braking for its time. series long plot arcs. cutting edge (for the time) SFX, great scripts, excellent cast. there are so many little things that you see in S1 that don't pay off until S3 or 4.

it is one of those shows that will never come again. so much had to happen just right, script, cast, etc and it all gelled perfectly and produced one of the best shows ever! honestly it was almost as ground breaking as Star Trek was back in the 60s.

such a shame that the efforts to get a remaster are constantly shot down

Dauntless wrote:

cthia wrote:I haven't had a chance to enjoy Babylon 5 yet, but my bother gave me the full series on DVD. He, and many here in the forum seem to be big Babylonians.

If you get the chance to watch it you really should. it was pretty ground braking for its time. series long plot arcs. cutting edge (for the time) SFX, great scripts, excellent cast. there are so many little things that you see in S1 that don't pay off until S3 or 4.

it is one of those shows that will never come again. so much had to happen just right, script, cast, etc and it all gelled perfectly and produced one of the best shows ever! honestly it was almost as ground breaking as Star Trek was back in the 60s.

such a shame that the efforts to get a remaster are constantly shot down

I always felt the scripting was the best part - The writer drew out the entire arc with all the major plot points from the beginning, and stuck to it. The vision never changed, even though the show was constantly in danger of being canceled, no other major concepts or ideas crept in to change the focus of the series.

cthia wrote:A. How close to the limit is Astro Control? And, is it inside or outside the limit? I thought it was way outside. But I remember reading that everything worth defending is inside the limit.

B Ditto, the Forts.

Ok, the Wiki says 7 light-hours from Manticore-A.

Astro control for the Junction it, as you saw, way outside the hyper limit of Manticore-A's star. Similarly at Yelsin the Blackbird yards were way outside the hyper limit of Yeltsin's star.

However, fortunately, the Junction and Uriel (the gas giant Blackbird orbits) have their own (much smaller) hyper limits; a little under a million km radius for the Junction and around 5 LM (~89 million km) for Uriel; so Astro control, the junction forts, and the Blackbird yards are all inside some hyper limit. (Just not their star's hyper limit)


Habitable planets are inevitable within the hyper limit of their star. And most of what you want to defend is usually near those planets. So for most systems "everything worth defending" is inside the limit.
Wormholes are the largest exception as they've universally been found beyond it (even Torch's which is unusually close to the star) yet are well worth defending.

There may also be orbital mining or gas extraction from gas giants near or beyond the hyper limit. But in the cold calculus of war a defending fleet can afford to write those off in order to adequately protect the habitable world and all it's orbital industry and infrastructure. So in some ways those can sometimes be considered not worth defending.

cthia wrote:
A. How close to the limit is Astro Control? And, is it inside or outside the limit? I thought it was way outside. But I remember reading that everything worth defending is inside the limit.

B Ditto, the Forts.

Ok, the Wiki says 7 light-hours from Manticore-A.

The junction is light hours away from the Hyperlimit, however, the junction creates it's own hyperlimit (about a million km across if I recall correctly), and creates a cone shaped "resonance zone" between itself and the Primary's hyperlimit that disrupts hypering in and out of.

Astro Control, the Junction warehouses, servicing centers and the forts all sit inside of the Junction's hyperlimit. This keeps attackers from jumping directly on top of the junction, but close enough that defenders had to be vigilant at all times to avoid attack.

here is an image of the system from Jayne's RMN

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YKy-t81hCCbbvd-WmMLtTg3HtV7cnIkD/view?usp=sharing

cthia wrote:Funny you mentioned coming in carrying the maximum velocity, and I'm glad you explained it because I was thinking a ship could use that tactic as a head start on any possible ship planning to mousetrap it?

They could, but there's two good reasons not to. Three, if you count being sick all over the place.

First, it's really expensive in terms of time. You have to invest about 10 hours to get up that speed before you translate downward, and it only saves you 40 minutes of time building a real space velocity once you do.

Second, and far more important, it's really dangerous. Unless you have perfect intelligence data about the system you're attacking, you could run into something you'd rather not run into with a velocity high enough you can't avoid running into it. That "it" probably isn't going to be a rock or asteroid field unless your charts are really off, but it could include an enemy fleet or piles of missile pods you didn't know were there and are moving to fast to avoid. It's usually safer to translate at a reasonably low speed and take the time to check the system for potential problems even at the expense of a longer flight time in normal space.

Of the three terms: translating, jumping and hypering. Why didn't the author reserve "jumping" exclusively for the junctions, like Stargate-SG1 and everyone else who goes through a wormhole? Since our brains have already been trained for that.

That's above my pay grade.

I need to reread it again, so please pardon the question, but I didn't think a ship could see what's going on in n-space from hyper, but both Tourville and Honor was waiting for the other shoe to drop, as if they were watching the action. Plus, Honor was entering the action from the junction. (I'm going to re-read that section now.)

(Assuming you were talking about Salon, not Manticore)

Correct. Ships cannot see what's happening in normal space from hyperspace, or vice versa. What they CAN do is leave behind a stealthed destroyer or two when the fleet hypers in, which will then stay outside the hyper limit at rest relative to the limit. They can wait there or move to a pre-planned position where they wait for word from the main fleet as to when and where the reinforcements should jump in to maximize how thoroughly the target gets trapped. Once they get the word, they translate up (which is undetectable) and pass the message to the reinforcements. The reinforcements then move to the plotted location to translate down and trap the targets.

In Giscard's case at Salon, he had a group of dispatch boats near a decoy target way out from the star's hyper limit. Those ships could translate up at regular intervals to keep Giscard updated as to what was going on. Once they'd hypered out to pass the word to Giscard they had to stay in hyper, since dropping back into normal space would have been visible to 8th Fleet. Thus he had a very limited supply of messengers to keep him informed as to when and where to drop his ships most effectively.

(Assuming you were talking about Manticore)
Tourville did much the same as above, leaving a couple destroyers behind to act as messengers to send to 5th fleet when the time came. Diamato watched the junction in normal space, and had to send a destroyer as a messenger to 2nd fleet for each message he sent - the two fleets were much too far apart for unaided FTL pulse coms. While these would show up as new hyper footprints each time a messenger was used, the Manticorans could see the messenger leave and arrive, meaning those extra footprints could be dismissed as the main fleet keeping in contact with the battlecruiser squadrons watching the junction. They didn't expect the other messenger waiting to call in 5th fleet because that messenger had been sitting like a hole in space specifically to avoid being detected.

Harrington had it even easier. While in Trevor's Star there was a relay of dispatch boats coming through the wormhole specifically to give her tactical updates. Once she started passing her fleet through the wormhole, she could get tactical updates passed along with the Hermes FTL communications buoy network in the Manticore system. Due to travel time the updates would be several minutes out of date before she got to see them, but it still would have been far more comprehensive and cumbersome than the messenger method.

A. How close to the limit is Astro Control? And, is it inside or outside the limit? I thought it was way outside. But I remember reading that everything worth defending is inside the limit.

B Ditto, the Forts.

Ok, the Wiki says 7 light-hours from Manticore-A.

Two things. Yes, Astro Control is located 7 light hours outside the hyper limit of the star. Wormholes are one of the exceptions to the "everything worth defending" rule. There are other minor exceptions, but all inhabited planets are inside their respective stars' hyper limit.

That said, the junction itself has a hyper limit of its own. I want to say something like several light seconds around it; maybe someone can back that up with textev. Astro Control is located in that hyper limit but a few light seconds away from the junction itself (never really stated but assumed). The forts are located at least a couple light seconds out from the junction as well, to keep them out of energy range of any potential hostile that comes through the junction.

Jonathan S. excellent response about mousetrapping an Apollo force matches my assessment. More specifically though, to put it in context of an Honorverse battle sequence, let's put 8th Fleet in the position of "closer to the junction" so they hyper in first, which in theory puts them inside Theisman and Tourville's strategized mousetrap, i.e. within range of both RHN fleets.

We'll also assume that 8th Fleet uses the same tactics -- meaning half of the Apollo missiles ready to launch on emergence, and that HH is foolish enough to hyper into an go for that optimum position which is in the RHN's hoped for kill-zone. In theory, 8th Fleet is now endangered because they only get the massive salvo opportunity once, after which they're rolling highly accurate smaller salvos. So yes, you may have mousetrapped an Apollo equipped force. But that's sort of like trapping a forward controlled mortar unit and hoping to get close enough for a bunch of rifle shooters to win the day.

Anyway, in the Honorverse, the RHN trap assumes two things, maybe three. First, Tourville has to survive long enough to order Chin to hyper in, and second, that 8th Fleet launches the full 1/2 loadout at 2nd Fleet. Both of which don't make sense given Honor's disdain for all-or-nothing kill everybody tactics described in her time as a Saganami instructor. I think she would instruct her ships to launch half that massive salvo (1/4, or about 3800 pods) at 2nd Fleet, targeting the 40 least damaged SD(P)s with a smattering of 5-10 pods each going after the cripples. Then she communicates a surrender order to whichever RHN admiral is still alive after the strike hits.

Meanwhile, let's assume that 5th Fleet does somehow get the order to hyper in, and does so to the pre-selected point minus the differential listed in AAC. Before Chin's SDs can re-cycle her generators, 8th Fleet retargets, and launches the other half of the limpeted Apollo pods at 5th Fleet. Again, that's 3800 pods. If they get their generator's cycled, their only choice is to hyper back out. If not? KaBoom. 40-ish more RHN SD(P)s go buh-bye. Only this time, those ships are at a range where Sphinx can launch their system defense Mark 25s as well, and hand off control to 8th Fleet.

So far 8th Fleet has only launched two massive salvos...

Then Kuzak's Third fleet micro-jumps in to mousetrap whatever is left of 5th Fleet. Who then have to hyper out immediately.

cthia wrote:

locarno24 wrote:If you want the hyper limit to be a 'drop dead' value where jumping suddenly becomes impossible, then it makes sense it wouldn't be a linear equation producing the radius anyway, since you'd want the hyper limit to be generated by a 'tending to 0' or 'tending to infinity' hyperbola.

Or, more formally . . .

lim f ()
x→Ø, ∞

As x approaches Ø, ∞.



PS.

Locarno, I haven't had a chance to enjoy Babylon 5 yet, but my brother gave me the full series on DVD. He, and many others here in the forum seem to be big Babylonians.

You are in for a treat.

Aside from being excellent Sci Fi by Television standards, it features Mira Furlan and Claudia Christiansen who both look great in or out of costume. For us Americans, it is also fun to see Billy Mummy revive his career after being a child star. Ditto for "Flounder" from ANIMAL HOUSE.

--snipping myself, lol--

SharkHunter wrote:Then Kuzak's Third fleet micro-jumps in to mousetrap whatever is left of 5th Fleet. Who then have to hyper out immediately.

By the way, that would have been my backup strategy for 5th Fleet. Having them hyper out back to retake Trevor's Star -- because if 5th and 8th are in Manticoran space, they can do so. At best, it's a holding action, so the overall story arc(s) don't change all that much... as in, Mission of Honor's plot line is much the same, except that maybe we get one more battle sequence first.