?

Don't forget that RFC does use OTL wet navy as a template often. In WW2 navies did use capital ship weapons as part of their anti aircraft suite.
From memory the Japanese were particularly adept. Imagine dodging proximity fused shells from Yamato or Musashi?

Remontoire wrote:Though not necessarily a combat advantage, the streak drive combined with the wormhole access GA has would greatly speed up logistics/communication within the GA. Given how big the volume of space is and the number of junctions controlled by SEM/RH/IE/ROE ect I think this would be even more effective for GA than MALIGN. Now that the peeps have Simoes seems likely we may see that come into being in the next few books?

Edit: *facepalm* How did I miss tbl already saying this in literally the second post on this thread -.-

This is interesting. Exactly why DID the MA develop the Streak Drive? I recall textev stating they fired a lot of neurons at this project, even for Alphas. So why did they go to such lengths to produce a drive that doesn't seem to have any tactical benefits? Albeit, strategically, it did help with instigating war between several factions, hustling data about the Galaxy. But, is that prima facie evidence? Is there some other hidden need, agenda, or application of this drive we don't know about? Surely the MA didn't exert so much mental energy simply so Detweiler could have a shiny new red superfast sports car.

Or, perhaps, the location of Darius somehow needs an SST like transport to stay connected - without the inhibitive operating cost. LOL

I find it interesting that the MA developed both the slowest and the fastest ship. Do consider that the tortoise does win a race.

cthia wrote:This is interesting. Exactly why DID the MA develop the Streak Drive? I recall textev stating they fired a lot of neurons at this project, even for Alphas. So why did they go to such lengths to produce a drive that doesn't seem to have any tactical benefits? Albeit, strategically, it did help with instigating war between several factions, hustling data about the Galaxy. But, is that prima facie evidence? Is there some other hidden need, agenda, or application of this drive we don't know about? Surely the MA didn't exert so much mental energy simply so Detweiler could have a shiny new red superfast sports car.

Or, perhaps, the location of Darius somehow needs an SST like transport to stay connected - without the inhibitive operating cost. LOL

I find it interesting that the MA developed both the slowest and the fastest ship. Do consider that the tortoise does win a race.

Unlike say, the Manticoran Navy which counts on the intelligence and discretion of the local commander; the Onion has always been centrally controlled. The problem with central direction is the time lags between information coming in and commands going out; this was commented on in chapter 23 of The Short Victorious War:

"I think they're trying for too fine a degree of coordination." Givens waved at the display. "They've been turning the pressure up for weeks now. At first it was just 'mystery' raiders we couldn't positively ID, and when we knew they were Peeps, there was no combat. Then they started actively harassing our patrols. Now they're pouncing on convoys and system pickets with hunt-and-kill tactics. But every time they do something to up the ante, it starts at one point, then ripples out north and south."

"Indicating what?"

"Indicating that each increase in pressure is the result of a specific authorization from some central command node. Look at the timing, Sir." She reached into the holo, running her fingers up and down the frontier. "If you assume each fresh escalation was authorized from someplace fifty or sixty light-years inside the Peep border—like Barnett, for example—the delay in the incidents to either side of the first incident in the new pattern is just about right for the difference in the flight times to those points from Barnett."

She withdrew her hand and frowned at the display, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.

"So they're coordinating from a central node," Caparelli agreed. "But we figured that all along, Pat. In fact, we're doing the same thing. So how does that constitute 'too cute for their own good'?"

"We're not doing the same thing, Sir. We're channeling information and authorizing general deployments, but we're trusting local COs to use their own judgments because of the com lag. It looks to me like the Peeps are authorizing each successive wave of activity from Barnett, which implies a two-way command and control link, not just information flow. They're waiting until they hear back, then sending out orders to begin the next stage, then waiting for fresh reports before authorizing the next step. They're playing brontosaurus—that's why this whole thing seems to be building up so ponderously."

Anything that can reduce the time lag would give an enormous benefit to that sort of command and control.

cthia wrote:This is interesting. Exactly why DID the MA develop the Streak Drive? I recall textev stating they fired a lot of neurons at this project, even for Alphas. So why did they go to such lengths to produce a drive that doesn't seem to have any tactical benefits? Albeit, strategically, it did help with instigating war between several factions, hustling data about the Galaxy. But, is that prima facie evidence? Is there some other hidden need, agenda, or application of this drive we don't know about? Surely the MA didn't exert so much mental energy simply so Detweiler could have a shiny new red superfast sports car.

Because being able to move your fleet faster strategically, and cut down on your command and control and information gathering loops provides significant strategic and operational advantages; even if it provides no help once a given battle starts.

Ask any Admiral in WWI what they'd give and how much money they'd be thrilled that their country "wasted" in order to increase the economical cruise speed of all their ships by even just 4-5 knots (even if the tactical battle speed remained unchanged; and so the engine improvement had no tactical advantage).

Daryl wrote:Don't forget that RFC does use OTL wet navy as a template often. In WW2 navies did use capital ship weapons as part of their anti aircraft suite.
From memory the Japanese were particularly adept. Imagine dodging proximity fused shells from Yamato or Musashi?

Well Japan tried it the most. Of course they didn't have proximity fuses. And unless fired against a tight formation of aircraft an 18.1" AA fused shell is little more effective than a 5" shell would be. In fact, given the AA proximity fuses the Allied did have they figured that it was a bet fit for a 3" weapon than the 4.5" - 5.5" guns they had to use it on because the lethal bursting radius of the 3" high explosive most closely matched the effective range of the proximity fuse. (So the extra lethal distance of a 5" burst was wasted because if the shell didn't pass within the smaller diameter of a 3" shell's lethality the fuse simply wouldn't get enough return to trigger).
And scaling down to a 3" gun lets you build a faster aiming, faster firing, and higher velocity weapon for the same weight of mount; so your AA defenses get better with the smaller weapons (though at the expense of reducing the effectiveness of a dual purpose guns' anti-surface capabilities)

An 18.1" shell would be that problem scaled up to a ludicrous degree. You can't train the gun to track an aircraft, it fires painfully slowly (just a couple rounds a minute), and the fuses of the day couldn't take advantage of it's larger lethal burst radius. But, sure, if it got lucky an a proximity fused 18.1" gun passed within fuse range of an aircraft it would instantly reduce it to chaff.


As for the Sanshikidan 18.1" AA shells the Japanese did use, calling their use "adept" is disagreed with by every USN naval aviator that faced them. They looked fairly impressive; like an enormous flaming firework bursting. But except by purest luck they wouldn't threaten attacking aircraft. (And worse firing the main guns interfered with the more effective AA mounts the ship's carried, so even trying to use the shell was a net loss for Japanese AA effectiveness)

The tactic that may have been a bit more effective was to use the main armament of cruisers, to fire at the ocean in front of approaching torpedo bombers. In theory that broke up the attack by forcing the bombers to try to thread their way through the waterspouts. However I haven't seen any operation analysis on the measurable effectiveness of the tactic.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:This is interesting. Exactly why DID the MA develop the Streak Drive? I recall textev stating they fired a lot of neurons at this project, even for Alphas. So why did they go to such lengths to produce a drive that doesn't seem to have any tactical benefits? Albeit, strategically, it did help with instigating war between several factions, hustling data about the Galaxy. But, is that prima facie evidence? Is there some other hidden need, agenda, or application of this drive we don't know about? Surely the MA didn't exert so much mental energy simply so Detweiler could have a shiny new red superfast sports car.

Because being able to move your fleet faster strategically, and cut down on your command and control and information gathering loops provides significant strategic and operational advantages; even if it provides no help once a given battle starts.

Ask any Admiral in WWI what they'd give and how much money they'd be thrilled that their country "wasted" in order to increase the economical cruise speed of all their ships by even just 4-5 knots (even if the tactical battle speed remained unchanged; and so the engine improvement had no tactical advantage).

Move the Fleet? Did I not get another HUGE memo? I thought the Streak Drive is limited to Dispatch Boats!?

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Because being able to move your fleet faster strategically, and cut down on your command and control and information gathering loops provides significant strategic and operational advantages; even if it provides no help once a given battle starts.

Ask any Admiral in WWI what they'd give and how much money they'd be thrilled that their country "wasted" in order to increase the economical cruise speed of all their ships by even just 4-5 knots (even if the tactical battle speed remained unchanged; and so the engine improvement had no tactical advantage).

Move the Fleet? Did I not get another HUGE memo? I thought the Streak Drive is limited to Dispatch Boats!?

So far we've primarily seen them in dispatch boats; but that's probably in large part because dispatch boats have been the main MAlign ships we've seen in time sensitive situations.

But looking around they've equipped at least some freighters with them; because the used them to get the Silver Bullets from Darius to Warner where they got transferred to the ships that snuck them into Beowulf.

Uncompromising Honor wrote:So as soon as your Bullets are ready to go, we load them onto one of our streak drive freighters here in Darius and send them to Warner.

(then a few more comments about how quickly streak drive equipped freighters can cover this route)


But ultimately the "streak drive" is just a project name for an improved hyper generator. Once you've got the tech there's no reason not to build it into every new warship you lay down (and look at retrofitting it into older warships as they undergo major refits -- unfortunately if you didn't know to leave oversized engineering spaces you'd have to move armored bulkheads to free up enough volume to retrofit a streak drive. That's a pain). (But you'd want to restrict freighters or other notionally civilian ships carrying it to routes where they aren't subject to search or boarding; wouldn't want someone to steal your super-secret tech )

cthia wrote:Move the Fleet? Did I not get another HUGE memo? I thought the Streak Drive is limited to Dispatch Boats!?

In the books, we have only seen it used to move small groups of people around in what are fancy yachts passing as DB's. But at various times in the forum we have discussed putting it into everything up to an SD. Consider the advantage for Honor's deep strikes into Haven, if the round trip times were cut by weeks.

Jonathan_S wrote:(But you'd want to restrict freighters or other notionally civilian ships carrying it to routes where they aren't subject to search or boarding; wouldn't want someone to steal your super-secret tech )

There's another passage that a streak drive is indistinguishable from a regular hyper generator, unless you actually get engineers to dismantle it and inspect how it works. So it was safe to send even to those systems. They wouldn't know what they had.

Past tense in the case of the GA. Herlander Simões didn't know a lot about the spider drive, but he did know about the streak drive. The GA definitely now has knowledge of how one of those works and specfically how the MAlign put theirs together. So the GA is likely to implement an extended search into engineering spaces that will detect the telltales of a streak drive, then isolate the ship for further inspection.

Jonathan_S wrote:(But you'd want to restrict freighters or other notionally civilian ships carrying it to routes where they aren't subject to search or boarding; wouldn't want someone to steal your super-secret tech )

ThinksMarkedly wrote:There's another passage that a streak drive is indistinguishable from a regular hyper generator, unless you actually get engineers to dismantle it and inspect how it works. So it was safe to send even to those systems. They wouldn't know what they had.

Past tense in the case of the GA. Herlander Simões didn't know a lot about the spider drive, but he did know about the streak drive. The GA definitely now has knowledge of how one of those works and specfically how the MAlign put theirs together. So the GA is likely to implement an extended search into engineering spaces that will detect the telltales of a streak drive, then isolate the ship for further inspection.

I thought that it was stated to be physically bigger. But is that enough to be obviously different? Mission of Honor, chapter 4:

But the Mesan Alignment hadn't abandoned it, and finally, after the better part of a hundred T-years of dogged research, they'd found the answer. It was, in many ways, a brute force approach, and it wouldn't have been possible even now without relatively recent advances (whose potential no one else seemed to have noticed) in related fields. And even with those other advances, it had almost doubled the size of conventional hyper generators. But it worked. Indeed, they'd broken not simply the iota wall, but the kappa wall, as well.