?

kzt wrote:David implied (or actually stated) that the spiders essentially beams out the waste heat in a very tight beam. Which I'm pretty sure is a violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

IIRC the same applies to conventional ships, such as Fearless lying in wait to ambush with the Thing That Shall Not Be Named. They managed to sneak an entire light cruiser well within energy range without its heat signature being picked up despite two running reactors and no wedge. (And I'd need to see textev about heat being dumped into a wedge; I don't recall anything of the sort being mentioned.)

Plus, of course, there's a variety of things in universe that violate the known laws of physics. Adding one more is no big deal.

cthia wrote:Conventional warships and missiles have to worry about wedge on wedge fratricide. Does the same fratricide apply to spider drives? Can a Lenny launch a GT with it's drive already engaged? If Harkness brought up a spider drive inside a MA boat bay, will it go BOOM?

Dunno what would happen if you cross the beams (the vastly overpowered tractors beams of a spider drive node). But at a minimum you might be able to operate spider drive much closer to each other if care was taken not to cross the beams.

However since the spider drive node was described as, in essence, a tractor beam overpowered to the point it could act almost as a weapon (albeit one far too short ranged and inefficient to be practical) I'd think activating one inside another ship would do unpleasant things to that surrounding ship. And truly unpleasant if they happened to rip open one or more of its fusion reactors.

But, normally, it probably wouldn't cause the instant total destruction a wedge would. Still, each spider node should be strong enough to rip a ragged path through at least much of the surrounding ship; and having 3 lines of those (one from each of the 3 spines of the spider drive) ripping bits out of the surrounding ship isn't going to do good things.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:Indeed, SL stealth tech is lacking, but the point is we have little direct comparison between RMN scanning tech and MAlign's stealth. We know they didn't see the GTs during Oyster Bay, but those were flying on a significant fraction of the speed of light and they turned their spiders on a day out.

That is the wild card isn't it? Though the reverse is also true. The GAs elaborate net hasn't been tested against first rate MA stealth. IMO, the stealth isn't dependent on speed. Albeit, it may matter regarding the range in which it engages its drive, and/or rather, if it engages "within" the GA detection net. If the enemy is aware that they have been fired, then speed might be important. Might be. Do recall the many times the RMN fired at Havenite ships then shut down the drive. The Havenites couldn't track them although they had a reasonable idea where they should be, and the Havenites had something the GA won't have. A workable vector. Firing without an impeller drive doesn't allow your enemy to gauge a missile's acceleration. Which also might make it even harder to find them. GR drones couldn't be localized even when they were known to be there. MA stealth is better.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:At 1 to 2 million km, the Lenny is relatively stationary to the target. If it fires a conventional missile from that distance, the missile will take 1 to 2 minutes to hit the target, which is plenty for the defenders to bring up walls and to fire back. At that distance, a conventional missile is a suicide mission for little upside.

However, if they get that close they can drop off pods that will light off at the Lenny's discretion, i.e., after it is long gone.

If by conventional missile you mean Cataphracts, then all too true. But if by Malign design conventional is Remontoire's hybrid GT, it won't matter if the GA has time to bring up sidewalls. Scores of GA missiles hitting a ship with wedge up will still destroy it. I imagine scores of a 3-second firing missile from he!! will do the same.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If it fires a GT, then the torpedo will take even longer to reach the target. Its range probably is much bigger, so it doesn't need to get that close. But even if it needs to go from 1.1 million km to 700,000, the travel time is 368 seconds. On the other hand, it will be bringing its spider up MUCH closer to the defenders' sensors. There's a good chance that it'll be picked up. And the time is long enough for RDs to be vectored in to see what's going on.

GTs deployed at a little over five minutes out doesn't frighten you? You got that much ice in your veins? LOL

cthia wrote:Pods cannot risk firing on something "between" them and the planet, in such close proximity to the planet. Even IF at that point, Lennys are detected. No?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Right, but unless it's in low- or medium orbit, there may be pods that can have a firing solution without endangering the planet. Plus there's telemetry from the ground, which can guide the missiles to target and not the planet.

And don't forget that this is the defenders' planet. It's not an EE violation if they accidentally strike their own planet. They may reason that it's better to risk a missile grazing the atmosphere than to surrender to the MAlign.

But those are good points in favour of having OWPs. If those are in mid- or even high orbit, the planet is always behind them.

Albeit, and I'll risk speaking for you as well; we would all imagine it'd tickle the MA pink if it could cause the GA to kill millions of its own people. I hope it will be a Manty captain who makes that decision. A Havenite or Grayson captain making that call and killing millions on planet may send a negative ripple back thru the Alliance. Poor bastard; bastard because no one is going to claim to know him afterwards. Regardless, your point is solid. I just wouldn't want to be the lamb to make the call of the lesser of those two evils. Especially if among the dead is Honor and or the Queen.

cthia wrote:I saw your calculations. I'm just not certain they will alter the equation if Lennys can get that close. Consider the range the Sharks had to launch GTs and the range the Lennys will launch. Even if TOA is an hour, then Christmas dinner isn't exactly late. And, even if Lennys launch normal, first generation GTs from their closest range, time on target will still be too short for any target to enjoy Christmas.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The difference is the final speed. At 150 gravities, a torpedo would need over 45 hours and 130 AU to reach 0.8c. Even for 0.3c it's nearly 17 hours and over 18 AU (2.75 billion km) under acceleration.

The only alternative is that the LD itself accelerates to such a high speed in the general direction towards the target before launching from MUCH further out. At that point, the LD picks a random direction and accelerates away, while the torpedoes accelerate towards it. This is a workable attack mode, but it's the exact opposite of firing from close range.

The problem in this scenario is that the LD will still come close. The best it can hope for is a close fly-by. If the GT has a constant acceleration of 150 gravities and the the LD can pull an emergency acceleration of 250, then they separate at 400 gravities. It would need to launch at about 65 million km at no more than 0.3c to be over 1 million km from the target when the GTs fire.

In this scenario, the spiders were turned on very far out, so the likelihood of being picked up is small.

I suspect the Lennys will have every tactic we can conceive of in it's reportoire, to be used depending on the situation and objectives.* I also imagine the Lennys will have more than one version of its missile. Much like the GA.**

cthia wrote:I don't expect Lennys to risk less than a light second either. Albeit I'm not prepared to think they can't achieve it under ideal conditions -- whatever ideal conditions might entail. I'm considering that the author is using the analogy of modern subs. Those subs launched from mocking distances as well, but in certain instances fired from "within" the blockade.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:No military planner works with ideal conditions, at least not for long. The first attempts will be made under worst conditions planned and then they can refine as data indicates how well the stealth is performing.

All too true. Do note, however, their tech has been deployed a few times with much success. They've had an opportunity to do some of that refining already.

* ** I think I failed to include here one of the notions I had in the "Lenny's are Coming" thread. Namely, for high value, critical targets like the Big 5, the Lennys will hunt in packs, utilizing the U-boats "Wolfpack" tactic. An entire squadron of Trojan Horses snuck into your garage has to be a nightmare. Each using different tactics and firing different missiles at different times and targets.

It's certainly loads of fun to speculate from the rear of the class.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

kzt wrote:David implied (or actually stated) that the spiders essentially beams out the waste heat in a very tight beam. Which I'm pretty sure is a violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

IIRC the same applies to conventional ships, such as Fearless lying in wait to ambush with the Thing That Shall Not Be Named. They managed to sneak an entire light cruiser well within energy range without its heat signature being picked up despite two running reactors and no wedge. (And I'd need to see textev about heat being dumped into a wedge; I don't recall anything of the sort being mentioned.)

Plus, of course, there's a variety of things in universe that violate the known laws of physics. Adding one more is no big deal.

I was compelled to come to that conclusion when I first read HOTQ. I was elated that Weber was at least calculating time, accelleration and distance cogently. In Weber's defense, I would point out that some of the hardest of the hard Sci Fi authors have takes liberties with the known laws of physics. The fusion powered photon drives favored by Niven and Pournelle have a specific impulse only 1/20 of a simpler fusion rocket. It gets even worse if you don't dump the Helium waste overboard. Even more interestingly, Niven and Pournelle vastly exaggerated the need for launching lasers. A fee weeks of boost from an array of lasers in the Petawatt power range would be sufficient to get to 1/10 C. This is trivial compared to the power output of the fusion reactors on the human ships. However; it was a critical dramatic ploy that not even I noticed until years after I first read The More in God's Eye.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

kzt wrote:David implied (or actually stated) that the spiders essentially beams out the waste heat in a very tight beam. Which I'm pretty sure is a violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

I was going to say it only violates thermodynamics if you don't include the alpha band in your closed system. You can dump waste heat without violating the second law.

But then I realised it's violating the first. We've been told that it's possible to extract energy from the alpha wall or band via the wedges, so we get meaningful work in the alpha-normal space direction. You can't do that and dump heat in the other direction...

IIRC the same applies to conventional ships, such as Fearless lying in wait to ambush with the Thing That Shall Not Be Named. They managed to sneak an entire light cruiser well within energy range without its heat signature being picked up despite two running reactors and no wedge. (And I'd need to see textev about heat being dumped into a wedge; I don't recall anything of the sort being mentioned.)

I don't think there's any. That's our speculation, since otherwise the ships would be very hot and irradiating in the IR band. There would be no stealth even with wedges down.

As for Fearless lying in wait, I suspect it was picked up. Instead, it was ignored in the first round because what's a CL going to do against an SD it's not crossing Ts with? Honor may eve have been simulating an engineering casualty, which is completely believable for one of the 3 or 5 oldest ships in the games.

cthia wrote:However, if they get that close they can drop off pods that will light off at the Lenny's discretion, i.e., after it is long gone.

With the LD's anemic acceleration, that's a long time for those pods to be sitting out there. The LD needs an hour to be just under 10 million km away, at 150 gravities, or 12.75 million if they push it to 200. And you need a LOT of pods in order to overwhelm the defences, even surprised ones, of a space station. Especially if they are fired from close range, meaning the missiles have low terminal velocity.

GTs deployed at a little over five minutes out doesn't frighten you? You got that much ice in your veins? LOL

They do. But the point is that the further out they are deployed, the deadlier they are. That is, it's the inverse of what was suggested earlier: that the LD would close to spitting range and attack. No, I think they will attack from very far out, to maximise their stealth and the GTs. That also allows the LD to evade detection in case the GT is picked up by random chance.

I suspect the Lennys will have every tactic we can conceive of in it's reportoire, to be used depending on the situation and objectives.* I also imagine the Lennys will have more than one version of its missile. Much like the GA.**

I wonder if RFC read these threads to get ideas about tactics he could use, things that would work and those that wouldn't.

All too true. Do note, however, their tech has been deployed a few times with much success. They've had an opportunity to do some of that refining already.

Good point.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:As for Fearless lying in wait, I suspect it was picked up. Instead, it was ignored in the first round because what's a CL going to do against an SD it's not crossing Ts with? Honor may eve have been simulating an engineering casualty, which is completely believable for one of the 3 or 5 oldest ships in the games.

From textev, it popped through their CIC filters as a "new contact" seconds before they fired. And realistically, if you saw an "enemy" ship within spitting distance during a "combat" situation, would you assume it was actually helpless unless you'd been the one to render it so (i.e. blasted it to a hulk)?

Galactic Sapper wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:As for Fearless lying in wait, I suspect it was picked up. Instead, it was ignored in the first round because what's a CL going to do against an SD it's not crossing Ts with? Honor may eve have been simulating an engineering casualty, which is completely believable for one of the 3 or 5 oldest ships in the games.

From textev, it popped through their CIC filters as a "new contact" seconds before they fired. And realistically, if you saw an "enemy" ship within spitting distance during a "combat" situation, would you assume it was actually helpless unless you'd been the one to render it so (i.e. blasted it to a hulk)?

I assume, though it wasn't stated in the book, that the Fearless appearing as "new bogey, bearing—" when firing is because the GL requires uses the impeller nodes (though she manages to use it before fully activating her wedge). Still that building flare of grav power should appear as a spike on the King Rodger's passive sensors.

So by charging it to fire she had to stop lying doggo and become detectable (then she snapped up her wedge and fled). At that range the best stealth in the world isn't going to hide that kind of grav buildup. (No matter how distracted the tactical department might be with the ongoing missile engagement with the other wall of battle)

But careful coordination with Hemphill's wall probably did help distract people from noticing one powered down CL lurking in their path up until she activated the GL. If Honor had needed to try that trick without the distraction of that missile engagement I think she'd have been a lot more likely to be noticed a bit too soon.

Jonathan_S wrote:I assume, though it wasn't stated in the book, that the Fearless appearing as "new bogey, bearing—" when firing is because the GL requires uses the impeller nodes (though she manages to use it before fully activating her wedge). Still that building flare of grav power should appear as a spike on the King Rodger's passive sensors.

So by charging it to fire she had to stop lying doggo and become detectable (then she snapped up her wedge and fled). At that range the best stealth in the world isn't going to hide that kind of grav buildup. (No matter how distracted the tactical department might be with the ongoing missile engagement with the other wall of battle)

But careful coordination with Hemphill's wall probably did help distract people from noticing one powered down CL lurking in their path up until she activated the GL. If Honor had needed to try that trick without the distraction of that missile engagement I think she'd have been a lot more likely to be noticed a bit too soon.

One point to remember, at that time, CLs and DDs formed the outer sensor pickets of any formation; when 2 Walls came at each other, their outer CL pickets would hit each other first, breaking off to report - or fighting the opposite side's CL/DD to prevent the other side from seeing the formation movements and reporting back. Seeing a CL in front of a fleet would not be unexpected - Even if it was lying doggo.

Having it lying doggo, then try to fly directly at the opposing fleet into energy range, now that was unexpected.

Now, RDs are better, ship sensors are better, and the the outer picket is made of layers of RDs, followed by layers of LACS. I doubt Honor could have repeated the feat in 1920pd.

Theemile wrote:One point to remember, at that time, CLs and DDs formed the outer sensor pickets of any formation; when 2 Walls came at each other, their outer CL pickets would hit each other first, breaking off to report - or fighting the opposite side's CL/DD to prevent the other side from seeing the formation movements and reporting back. Seeing a CL in front of a fleet would not be unexpected - Even if it was lying doggo.

Having it lying doggo, then try to fly directly at the opposing fleet into energy range, now that was unexpected.

Now, RDs are better, ship sensors are better, and the the outer picket is made of layers of RDs, followed by layers of LACS. I doubt Honor could have repeated the feat in 1920pd.

The rest of the fleet was at maximum missile range, whereas Fearless was at a range suitable for using its point defenses to carve a mustache onto her target's bow. She had a light cruiser at a range where in later books it would take a Ghost Rider drone's stealth to get that close. I suspect it was something RFC learned from after the first book, as we never see ships sneak into that range undetected again. IIRC GL range was something like 40k km and the second closest undetected ambush is more like 700-800k km at Cerberus (discounting LACs, of course).

Even in HotQ, the Grayson fleet doesn't plan to coast that close to the Masadans because they knew they'd be detected before getting that close, although that was with pre-contact Grayson ships so the detection values may have been way higher.