Wormhole Assault: MA Style

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Transiting a wormhole does use the hypergenerators and sails are necessary. The question is whether the sails are necessary even if you don't use the generator. That is, can you enter the outbound lane without sails (and without impellers) and coast through?

I don't see a reason why not. But we haven't been told either way.

If this is possible, though, a missile can enter a departure or arrival lane, so long as it shuts down its impeller before doing so. It can therefore get closer to the ship it's going to attack before firing its payload. I guess this isn't done because, without its impellers, the missiles are sitting ducks ("coasting ducks" ?) for point defence. And I don't suppose the RMN is in the habit of keeping rocket-powered missiles for this purpose and that's even assuming they'd have any better performance...

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Transiting a wormhole does use the hypergenerators and sails are necessary. The question is whether the sails are necessary even if you don't use the generator. That is, can you enter the outbound lane without sails (and without impellers) and coast through?

I don't see a reason why not. But we haven't been told either way.

If this is possible, though, a missile can enter a departure or arrival lane, so long as it shuts down its impeller before doing so. It can therefore get closer to the ship it's going to attack before firing its payload. I guess this isn't done because, without its impellers, the missiles are sitting ducks ("coasting ducks" ?) for point defence. And I don't suppose the RMN is in the habit of keeping rocket-powered missiles for this purpose and that's even assuming they'd have any better performance...

I seem to recall RFC saying a ship in the arrival lane can't deployed decoys - and those are primarily RF based devices; and wouldn't seem to produce anything that would create destructive grav interference with the arrival/departure lane.

And we're told that one of the reasons Manticore's pre-war war games overestimated the threat of a Havenite wormhole assault was they hadn't fully comprehended how much laserheads tilted things in favor of the defenders by allowing missiles to engage hostile transiting ships. But my understanding is that laserheads could only do that because their far greater standoff range (compared to any previous missile warhead) meant the missile body didn't have to enter the gravity effects of the arrival lane.

So I took this to mean that a ship, or object, did need a sail to survive long within the limited volume of the arrival/departure lane.

Jonathan_S wrote:I seem to recall RFC saying a ship in the arrival lane can't deployed decoys - and those are primarily RF based devices; and wouldn't seem to produce anything that would create destructive grav interference with the arrival/departure lane.

Theemile wrote:However, these very items may have been noticed by the RMN and the outcome of those early wargames were stressed outside the fortress community for far longer than reality should have suggested, Enticing a gullible opponent into a well laid trap.

kzt wrote:In terms of penetrating bubble fields, well, we have never heard anything more detailed than:
...
6) It's perfectly feasible to fit them on a LD.

drothgery wrote:

kzt wrote:In terms of penetrating bubble fields, well, we have never heard anything more detailed than:
...
6) It's perfectly feasible to fit them on a LD.

This is frequently asserted here, but if there's textev or a Word of Weber on it, I haven't seen it.

kzt wrote:

drothgery wrote:This is frequently asserted here, but if there's textev or a Word of Weber on it, I haven't seen it.

David posted something that flat out said they could have them, but the glorified tractor drive they use can’t operate through it.

Theemile wrote:So we assume they mount one for defense. But the moment one would be raised, that LD is 100% localized on everyone's grav sensors. So using one is either a death sentence or a declaration that you believe you can take all comers.

Theemile wrote:
So we assume they mount one for defense. But the moment one would be raised, that LD is 100% localized on everyone's grav sensors. So using one is either a death sentence or a declaration that you believe you can take all comers.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Question:
When ships are in a holding pattern while sitting in the transit lane, aren't they affected by the grav waves in the turbulent rapids? Are thrusters constantly firing?

Well ships wouldn't be sitting in the transit lane. The holding area are well back from that - which is why they can be policed by pinnaces (such as when Fearless's detachment supported Basilisk Astro Control back in OBS). Pinnaces could police ships in the transit lane because you need sails to survive there and pinnaces don't carry sails.

Under common operation there probably aren't multiple ships in a given transit lane at the same time. RFC was talking about emergence lanes, not departure lanes, when he said the ones at the Junction took 4.5 minutes to traverse. But I doubt the departure lanes take any longer. (I swear there's a description RFC provided about the holding areas - but I'm not quickly finding it).

Certainly in OBS when Fearless first transits to Basilisk she watches the freighter ahead of her in line transit, her transit queue position updates to 1, and only then does she move forward and prepare to convert to sails. So Fearless must not have been in the departure lane yet when the previous ship transited. (Though the narrative eludes over the elapsed time between sails being completely rigged and the transit)

Of course OBS also mentions that the Junction was averaging a ship ever 3 minutes - and that would have been split among its 6 then known termini. So it would seem usually ACS would have no need to let ships crowd each other.


You'd only need 2 ships in the same departure lane simultaneously if you had reduced the interval between ships headed there to below 4.5 minutes. And I get the impression that, even now almost 2 decades later, Junction traffic rarely justifies crowding ships like that.

That said, certainly some of the military transits crowded it closer. White Haven racing from Trevor's Star to Basilisk comes to mind; as does 3rd and 8th fleets racing back to the Battle of Manticore. (The later of course topped off by the final bits of 8th fleet pulling off the only simultaneous transit we've seen)
So it's a fair question to ask if there's any extra turbulence they experienced. And, we just don't know.

All I can say is:
1) Any turbulence those warships might have experienced wasn't worth RFC mentioning; either as a risk or an experience.
2) We're told that Astro Control minimum allowed interval between ships is 1 minute - and they didn't say that was only for warships. That hints that freighters would also be able to stand up to any extra turbulence from transits.

So make of it what you will.