?

Galactic Sapper wrote: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).[/quote]

Sensors must surely have improved over time too. 1901 sensors on a 30-year-old ship that might have been due for a refit might have failed to pick up the CL, especially if Hemphill gave the Fearless the best stealth she could, to tip the scale in her favour.

Do also note that Fearless was picked up in every single subsequent game. The hand once burned is thrice shy. The CICs aboard Home Fleet most certainly stopped ignoring sensor ghosts after that time.

As for whether Fearless had her wedges down... could she and still have come into range of HMS King Roger? How did Honor know where D'Orville would be before she cut her wedge down? Or we best not dwell on how tactics using TWTSNBN would be...

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote: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).

Sensors must surely have improved over time too. 1901 sensors on a 30-year-old ship that might have been due for a refit might have failed to pick up the CL, especially if Hemphill gave the Fearless the best stealth she could, to tip the scale in her favour.

Do also note that Fearless was picked up in every single subsequent game. The hand once burned is thrice shy. The CICs aboard Home Fleet most certainly stopped ignoring sensor ghosts after that time.

As for whether Fearless had her wedges down... could she and still have come into range of HMS King Roger? How did Honor know where D'Orville would be before she cut her wedge down? Or we best not dwell on how tactics using TWTSNBN would be...

IINM, Honor didn't know. She counted on Hemphill to lead the lamb to slaughter.

Ironic because it is the same tactic that killed her beloved Courvosier.

OOPS!

I mistakenly edited the entire post. It was my response to Jonathan's response to me wondering what would happen if Harkness brought up a spider drive inside an MA boat Bay. I am wondering if a Lenny could launch a GT with drive already active.

Never operate heavy machinery while sleepy.

Again, my, sleepy, apology.

.

Galactic Sapper wrote: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).

It wasn't quite that bad. OBS says that its range "was barely a hundred thousand kilometers"

ThinksMarkedly wrote:As for whether Fearless had her wedges down... could she and still have come into range of HMS King Roger? How did Honor know where D'Orville would be before she cut her wedge down? Or we best not dwell on how tactics using TWTSNBN would be...

Not really a question of "if". The book is very explicity that she did

On Basilisk Station - Ch. 3 wrote:a crimson light glared on King Roger's main status board, and damage alarms screamed as the vastly understrength grav lance smashed into the superdreadnought's port sidewall. It was far too weak to inflict actual generator damage, but the computers noted it and obediently flashed their failure warning—just as an incredible salvo of equally understrength energy torpedoes exploded against the theoretically nonexistent sidewall.
[snip]
"Direct hit, Ma'am!" Venizelos screamed, and Honor permitted herself a fierce grin of triumph as the Aggressor flagship went ballistic
[snip]
"Bring the wedge up now!" [snip]Fearless's impeller wedge sprang to life.

So no wedge active until after both the GL and the energy torps had fired.

Jonathan_S wrote:Not really a question of "if". The book is very explicity that she did

I'm not questioning that she did. I'm asking how that was possible.

Home Fleet was playing Aggressor, so the defenders couldn't know where or when they'd arrive. The first scouts might pick them up and relay the information back to the flag. At that point, Fearless sets a course towards the side the aggressor fleet, powers the wedge down and goes ballistic.

Towards the side because if she was standing broadside in front of the incoming fleet, they'd see her as crossing their Ts and blast her to atoms. So she's broadside to broadside, not a threat.

I also suppose the entire aggressor fleet was within the 100,000 km range, but could Honor be sure she'd get there? And could she get a clear line of sight to attack HMS King Roger? Or was she using manoeuvring jets to get into position, like she did at Cerberus 10 years later?

Also, maybe her orders included an option to attack any SD if she couldn't get a direct line on King Roger. Decapitation strike is definitely a better tactic, especially if the aggressors were pretending to be Peeps or Sollies, but taking any SD out before the actual fighting started is almost as good. Or maybe even better if she took out a newer unit than an ageing King William.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Home Fleet was playing Aggressor, so the defenders couldn't know where or when they'd arrive. The first scouts might pick them up and relay the information back to the flag. At that point, Fearless sets a course towards the side the aggressor fleet, powers the wedge down and goes ballistic.

Towards the side because if she was standing broadside in front of the incoming fleet, they'd see her as crossing their Ts and blast her to atoms. So she's broadside to broadside, not a threat.

I also suppose the entire aggressor fleet was within the 100,000 km range, but could Honor be sure she'd get there? And could she get a clear line of sight to attack HMS King Roger? Or was she using manoeuvring jets to get into position, like she did at Cerberus 10 years later?

Also, maybe her orders included an option to attack any SD if she couldn't get a direct line on King Roger. Decapitation strike is definitely a better tactic, especially if the aggressors were pretending to be Peeps or Sollies, but taking any SD out before the actual fighting started is almost as good. Or maybe even better if she took out a newer unit than an ageing King William.

I'm sure if the aggressor fleet had maneuvered she'd have settled for any waller she could get. But the whole trap was set up to convince D'Orville to come down a predictable vector towards Hemhill's forces.

And he must have spent a long time building up that vendor since my copy of OBS says "D'Orville's ships were charging ahead at almost a hundred and seventy thousand kilometers per second—just under .57 c". Using his SD's safe acceleration of about 322 gees I did some quick number crunching and it would have taken him 15 hours to work up to that speed (covering something like 4.2 light hours). So he'd have had to start building that vector at least 60% of the distance out to the Junction (though not necessarily from that direction).

With that much time to see him coming it shouldn't be too hard for Fearless (presumably initially maneuvering under stealthed wedge) and Hemphill to set up the geometry so she could lure him across Fearless's path after Fearless reached her desired vector and killed her wedge.



Hmm, unless Hemhill had also been building a vector back towards Manticore that was going to be a short engagement. At that base velocity D'Orville's ships cover 7 million km every 41 seconds! (OTOH that crazy high base velocity means their missiles would have a powered range of almost 38 million km against a target at rest - but his ships would still cover even that distance in under five and a half minutes)

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:
1) I don't think they can actually orbit without being picked up by old fashioned radar.

2) I don't believe this counts as controlling the orbitals. At that point it's contested space, not controlled space. Firing on the planet at that point is an Eridani violation.

No, they are magically transparent to everything.

And if you have a 30MT ship in orbit, everything military that was in orbit is clouds of debris.

It doesn't matter if it can trash everything in orbit. Controlling airspace means you have rid it of threats, not merely that you can bring heavy firepower to bear on threats. I would assume controlling orbitals would mean the same thing. Getting your ship into orbit undetected doesn't keep the defenders from unloading pods on you--I would not call the orbitals controlled while operational pods can bear.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And a single OWP can probably ruin a Lenny's day. It doesn't have a wedge and sidewalls, so being in orbit with no warships does not imply uncontested orbits. It has to take out all OWPs, if there are any. What I don't know is if there are, since OWPs are probably pretty useless against current warships.

It also has to worry about system defence pods that may be somewhere within 5 million km of the planet.

I think there's still a use for OWPs around major worlds. Yes, an OWP is basically useless against a modern warship, but there are other targets. We saw there were strict traffic control rules around the major stations--I would expect OWPs of some kind exist to enforce them in case some nutter gets the helm, as well as to shoot down threatening debris from an accident. They have the tugs at hot ready to deal with problems, I would expect grasers to deal with things the tugs can't get to in time.

ThinksMarkedly wrote: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.

Note, also, that the missile won't be moving all that fast. Plowing into the planet won't be cataclysmic. We've seen kinetic bombardment of planets--that's the sort of energies that will be involved. Also, there is more time--if the missile is off course a destruct command can be sent. It's not like the MDM scenario where a missile that senses it's heading for a planet will still devastate even if it self destructs.

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.

I'd put grasers in low orbit.

Jonathan_S wrote:Hmm, unless Hemhill had also been building a vector back towards Manticore that was going to be a short engagement. At that base velocity D'Orville's ships cover 7 million km every 41 seconds! (OTOH that crazy high base velocity means their missiles would have a powered range of almost 38 million km against a target at rest - but his ships would still cover even that distance in under five and a half minutes)

Note, also, that he can't engage Fearless with missiles and has only a few seconds to do so with energy weapons--too short a time to be designated a target and engaged. In a real engagement she could have lived even though she went to knife fighting range with a fleet. (On the other hand, if she was detected she didn't stand a chance.)