?

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:Aside from the streak drive, the hyper generator is very mature technology; so I am not sure anyone still has an "obsolete and inefficient generator".

Theemile wrote:A pre-1902 Grayson ship?

I do not think that they had merchant cargo ships, so that would be a warship? Unless they kept one as a living museum, like HMS Unconquered; they have been very aggressive in replacing all warships with the most modern models.

Micheal Winton's wife, Judith, was captured by Masadan pirates/Privateers on a Grayson freighter when her family's freighter was attacked by them. It had a hyperdrive, and was leater converted into another Masadan Privateer. So, in the 1880s, Grayson had some private hyper freighters. (Grayson had to have more or else the Masadan Privateers would have been out of a job.)

Ok, now that I'm over not getting the HUGE memo that the Streak Drive can be placed into a warship, how can that not be a tactical advantage, IF the result are ships that can out accelerate their enemy in battle?

I know no ship can outrun the GA's missiles, but if the MA can also develop a defensive doctrine equal to the GAs, a missile that equals it's range, and invisible ships cutting down on the control loop, then honey, we might finally have ourselves a matchup worth season tickets!

Brigade XO wrote:
On the other hand, when you send a time-fused AA shell of that size and range out, the burst makes a great way of telling your CAP "LOOK OVER HERE- THEY ARE COMMING FROM OVER HERE!!!!!" Sure, your telling your fighters info by radio but here's a big visual clue. Don't recall anybody ever claimed a kill with an 18' shell on a flying aircrafe.

True. And, partly because they had crummy radios to begin with, and partly because radio conditions over much of the Pacific theater in '42 - '43 were crap, many of the Japanese fighters had removed their radios as worthless.

A huge explosion saying "look over there" is a long way from the highly evolved British fighter direction; but it sure beat having no way to point the CAP at a threat. (The US then adopted the British methods after seeing them in use on HMS Victorious in her brief 1943 Pacific tour as USS Robin).

cthia wrote:Ok, now that I'm over not getting the HUGE memo that the Streak Drive can be placed into a warship, how can that not be a tactical advantage, IF the result are ships that can out accelerate their enemy in battle?

Streak drive does NOT do that.

Streak drive has absolutely no, zero, nada, effect on a ship's acceleration. It doesn't even change the top speed their rad shielding permits in n-space (.6 or .8c) or within a hyper band (.5 or .6c). The only thing it does is allow a ship to enter the Iota and Kappa bands of hyperspace.

A ship's transit time between stars is faster due entirely to the higher compression of those higher hyper bands. (RFC's chart shows that, while the Theta bands have a velocity multiplier of 5000c, the Iota bands have 6000c. And based on some numbers in the books the Kappa bands seem to have one around 7250c)

So it has no tactical effect in n-space. Strategic or operational effects from lower lag command and control loops, or being able to shift ships faster than anybody else; yes.

Jonathan_S wrote:So it has no tactical effect in n-space.

Note - the one place it might have a tactical use is trying to overhaul a ship within hyperspace; which basically never happens.

But without a streak drive if both ships max out at 0.6c in the Theta bands there's no way to close the distance. In theory having the streak drive would let a pursuer crack the Iota wall, use the higher compression to quickly get ahead, then one their hyper generator recharges drop back into the Theta bands ahead of the other ship. Of course that relies on the other ship just letting you pull this off by failing to react to you leaving the Theta bands. If they change add a side vector for a few minutes and then go silent before you can come back you're going to have a hell of a time finding them. Or they could simply drop to a lower hyper band and change course; they'd likely be well out of your search radius by the time you looked through multiple bands for them.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:So it has no tactical effect in n-space.

Note - the one place it might have a tactical use is trying to overhaul a ship within hyperspace; which basically never happens.

But without a streak drive if both ships max out at 0.6c in the Theta bands there's no way to close the distance. In theory having the streak drive would let a pursuer crack the Iota wall, use the higher compression to quickly get ahead, then one their hyper generator recharges drop back into the Theta bands ahead of the other ship. Of course that relies on the other ship just letting you pull this off by failing to react to you leaving the Theta bands. If they change add a side vector for a few minutes and then go silent before you can come back you're going to have a hell of a time finding them. Or they could simply drop to a lower hyper band and change course; they'd likely be well out of your search radius by the time you looked through multiple bands for them.

Damn, so right back to no tactical use at all. Tactically useless. Strategically viable. But tactically useless.

Unless it can reappear out of hyper much faster after it ducks into hyper to try and get inside the enemy's range, also catching them off guard. Like the SLN tried at the battle of Ajay. But I doubt that because those jumps are so short. Unless that advantage in hyper can let them reappear farther away from the battle?

I'm really trying to give this tech some tactical advantage. I'd like to hyper jump one step ahead of the author for a change. Dollars to donuts David comes up with a tactical advantage of streak driven ships.

But! If you're on to something Jonathan and they introduce the galaxy to combat in hyper, that'd be a tactical advantage worth those season tickets too!

Jonathan_S wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:So it has no tactical effect in n-space.

Note - the one place it might have a tactical use is trying to overhaul a ship within hyperspace; which basically never happens.

But without a streak drive if both ships max out at 0.6c in the Theta bands there's no way to close the distance. In theory having the streak drive would let a pursuer crack the Iota wall, use the higher compression to quickly get ahead, then one their hyper generator recharges drop back into the Theta bands ahead of the other ship. Of course that relies on the other ship just letting you pull this off by failing to react to you leaving the Theta bands. If they change add a side vector for a few minutes and then go silent before you can come back you're going to have a hell of a time finding them. Or they could simply drop to a lower hyper band and change course; they'd likely be well out of your search radius by the time you looked through multiple bands for them.

Makes me wonder about a high tech tracker placed on the hull of a Manty ship by an LD in n-space. A hect tech malignant version of the one used by Masada in the assassination attempt.

If the MA received Intel where a fleet is headed it can follow it into hyper and stay behind it far enough that it won't detect the tail. Like a detective ensuring it doesn't follow a suspect too closely. Then they can jump bands, race ahead and exit hyper well ahead of them. Lying in wait like the Spider-based entity they are. Is that what you meant?

Another OTL wet navy reference was HMS Warspite in WW2. Acclaimed at one time to be the best gunnery ship in the British Navy, a couple of exploits were the longest ship hit at 24 kilometres, and in support of the Normandy landings she was using single gun salvos to pick off German tanks. Imagine being in a line of tanks when the leading one then the rearmost one copped a 15 inch shell, followed by the hits walking along the line.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:
On the other hand, when you send a time-fused AA shell of that size and range out, the burst makes a great way of telling your CAP "LOOK OVER HERE- THEY ARE COMMING FROM OVER HERE!!!!!" Sure, your telling your fighters info by radio but here's a big visual clue. Don't recall anybody ever claimed a kill with an 18' shell on a flying aircrafe.

True. And, partly because they had crummy radios to begin with, and partly because radio conditions over much of the Pacific theater in '42 - '43 were crap, many of the Japanese fighters had removed their radios as worthless.

A huge explosion saying "look over there" is a long way from the highly evolved British fighter direction; but it sure beat having no way to point the CAP at a threat. (The US then adopted the British methods after seeing them in use on HMS Victorious in her brief 1943 Pacific tour as USS Robin).

cthia wrote:Ok, now that I'm over not getting the HUGE memo that the Streak Drive can be placed into a warship, how can that not be a tactical advantage, IF the result are ships that can out accelerate their enemy in battle?

Streak drive does NOT do that.

Streak drive has absolutely no, zero, nada, effect on a ship's acceleration. It doesn't even change the top speed their rad shielding permits in n-space (.6 or .8c) or within a hyper band (.5 or .6c). The only thing it does is allow a ship to enter the Iota and Kappa bands of hyperspace.

A ship's transit time between stars is faster due entirely to the higher compression of those higher hyper bands. (RFC's chart shows that, while the Theta bands have a velocity multiplier of 5000c, the Iota bands have 6000c. And based on some numbers in the books the Kappa bands seem to have one around 7250c)

So it has no tactical effect in n-space. Strategic or operational effects from lower lag command and control loops, or being able to shift ships faster than anybody else; yes.

It occurred to me, when war begins with the MA, that their commerce raiding strategy can turn out to be really devastating. Hordes of invisible sharks raiding commerce can be a very nasty ordeal. And, would it matter if some of the sharks are destroyed? Their crew complement is small, isn't it? And comparatively, some subs bit the dust too. But they gave a lot more than they ever got.

Of course, their commerce raiding strategy would be nastier because of its unavoidable "take no prisoner" approach.

cthia wrote:It occurred to me, when war begins with the MA, that their commerce raiding strategy can turn out to be really devastating. Hordes of invisible sharks raiding commerce can be a very nasty ordeal. And, would it matter if some of the sharks are destroyed? Their crew complement is small, isn't it? And comparatively, some subs bit the dust too. But they gave a lot more than they ever got.

Of course, their commerce raiding strategy would be nastier because of its unavoidable "take no prisoner" approach.

We all know the MAlign is ruthless and has no qualms about killing civilians. The question is how far they want to go with this. Given the Beowulf stations attack, they clearly want civilian megadeaths. But is there anyone they want on their side?

Attacking independent shipping could turn everyone against them. This becomes a propaganda war against them. It serves to rally every government and military against them. In fact, it becomes difficult for the Renaissance Factor to not get involved in the anti-MAlign side!

If it's not indiscriminate attack to shipping, if they attack only certain enemies. But that also restricts which convoys they can attack: can they attack if there's any non-enemy ship around? Will any of those leave with sufficient sensor readings to eventually put together a detection for the spider drive? And besides, who is not the enemy, if the GA and SL is? Won't that point out that the RF is in on it?

I agree that spider-based commerce raiding/attacking (they're not raiding if they attack without demanding surrender and heave-to) can be extremely deadly. Any kind of commerce raiding forces the adversary to deploy convoy escorts and against ships the escort can't detect, the escort isn't very effective. So my question in this is: what is their strategy? Commerce raiding is a means to an end, a tactic that supports a wider strategy. It can be to acquire the products being transported (unlikely), to force deployment of sufficient escorting forces (likely, though useless), or to inflict terror (very likely) or something else. How does any of this help them achieve their goals, their strategy?

Their current strategy is in shambles, since the SL survived and is likely to enter the strife against the MAlign. Are they going to throw good money after bad?

cthia wrote:It occurred to me, when war begins with the MA, that their commerce raiding strategy can turn out to be really devastating. Hordes of invisible sharks raiding commerce can be a very nasty ordeal. And, would it matter if some of the sharks are destroyed? Their crew complement is small, isn't it? And comparatively, some subs bit the dust too. But they gave a lot more than they ever got.

Of course, their commerce raiding strategy would be nastier because of its unavoidable "take no prisoner" approach.

If they've got enough sharks. Because with the best will in the world a shark can only raid commerce in part of one system as a time. Even if they don't have to worry a bit about escorts or enemy warships there may just not be enough sharks in existence to put a major dent in commerce.

(If they use missiles or graser torps then they need to worry about how long it take to resupply, if they close to energy range they can hit fewer targets because freighers are faster than sharks so even though the can't be seen the sharks can only get with 1,000,000 km or so many targets)

As far as we know the MAlign had only built a few dozen sharks; that's all they expected to need to train crews. Against the commerce of the galaxy that's not even a drop in the bucket. Now if they're willing to wait they could of course build more (presumably in exchange for building fewer Lenny Dets than they otherwise could) - but it'll be years before they're likely to have enough spider ships to manage a widespread effective commerce raiding strategy.