?

Brigade XO wrote:Since we also don't know what other offensive or defensive hardware and systems the LD's have that the Ghosts and Sharks have, we can't make any actual guesses at what their capasity is (beyond the Spyder and serious SmartSkin type stealth) and how the would be able to defend themselves if discovered.

On the other hand, the Sharks and Ghosts were deliverd by freighter so the did generate that initial scouting responce from the duty DD squadron to track down the downward from hyper spike so PROBABLY that isn't going to happen in an actual strike operation as the LD's are going to use the Spyder drive to get there, Somehow I don't see the Alignment building "conventional bulk freighters" of a size to carry the implied size of a LD to where it is going to work and then have to do the same routine as the Oyster Bay Attacks. We also don't know if an intention is to pair up an LD (one or more) with at least one Ghost so that the scout could do the close in work identifying targets and sending the information out to the attack ship(s)

I think that this is probaby essentialy a terror weapon system. Sure, the Oyster Bay attacks were more or less against targets which could be considered military in nature. But there was absolutleye no warning given in and with the nature of the weapon systems used, essentilay no possibility of evacuating civilians from anything. Note that it is discussed in some detail that the planners only took some effort to avoid the technical specs of an EE attack but that nothing was done to prevent (or try to prevent in any way) to keep chunks of stations from impacting on planets.
The INTENT was to destroy the orbital infrastructure and manufacturing capacity of the systems invovled AND to kill as many of their trained workforce as possible. All the civilians killed were just a bonus as far as the Alignment was concerned- more damage, horror, confusion and loss for the rest of the population of the systems. That was accomplished.

Brigade XO wrote:The "LD might as well be a freighter" though does bring up some interesting things.

We presume that it is intended to move to places and slink around with the Spider drive and then fire (well, push with mass driver or something similar) whatever number of Graser Torpedoes nessisary to accomplish it's/their mission. Perhaps also put out various ballistic packages like dropping pods.

Since we also don't know what other offensive or defensive hardware and systems the LD's have that the Ghosts and Sharks have, we can't make any actual guesses at what their capasity is (beyond the Spyder and serious SmartSkin type stealth) and how the would be able to defend themselves if discovered.

On the other hand, the Sharks and Ghosts were deliverd by freighter so the did generate that initial scouting responce from the duty DD squadron to track down the downward from hyper spike so PROBABLY that isn't going to happen in an actual strike operation as the LD's are going to use the Spyder drive to get there, Somehow I don't see the Alignment building "conventional bulk freighters" of a size to carry the implied size of a LD to where it is going to work and then have to do the same routine as the Oyster Bay Attacks. We also don't know if an intention is to pair up an LD (one or more) with at least one Ghost so that the scout could do the close in work identifying targets and sending the information out to the attack ship(s)

So, other than slinking up to a system with the undetectable (for now) Spyder drive and blowing the crap out of anything that lives in a regular orbit relative to anyting in that system, what is the mission of the LD's?
I think that this is probaby essentialy a terror weapon system. Sure, the Oyster Bay attacks were more or less against targets which could be considered military in nature. But there was absolutleye no warning given in and with the nature of the weapon systems used, essentilay no possibility of evacuating civilians from anything. Note that it is discussed in some detail that the planners only took some effort to avoid the technical specs of an EE attack but that nothing was done to prevent (or try to prevent in any way) to keep chunks of stations from impacting on planets.
The INTENT was to destroy the orbital infrastructure and manufacturing capacity of the systems invovled AND to kill as many of their trained workforce as possible. All the civilians killed were just a bonus as far as the Alignment was concerned- more damage, horror, confusion and loss for the rest of the population of the systems. That was accomplished.

So what was a major goal in THE PLAN befor and after Oyster Bay was "rushed". Destroy major systems ability to build and support both their navies and their capasity to manufacture anyting in orbital infrastructure. Shatter the League both militarily and politically so that the fragments could be brought into a situation set up to rewrite their basic philosophys, particularly in genetics. So you are going to crate situations where your maniplated set of systems (primarily Haven but Manticor would do) chew up the SLN and others in the process of creating a Balkinized humanity with multiple systems at war with others----and having already smashed what major powers capasity possible with Haven attacking the League, you send in the Lenny Detts and have undetected and unidentified forces hitting any orbital (and other including planitary) locations they want with no warning. Each victim is free to pick the probable attacker from whomever has been the most problem recently and then attempt to strike back in retaliation. The Alignment just keeps killing people and destroying capasity and lets the RF seed it's actual rebuilding program amoung the devistated survivors,

The Alignment is going to be slinking around stepping on ants (some of them very dangerous but they can't bite back at what they can't see of detect) till the ants as suitably "pacified" and reeducated to become just more Alignment cattle. All those lives of "normals" are of no consequence to the StarLines.

Storm From the Shadows - Ch. 48 wrote:"Bay doors are opening, Sir," another voice said, and Østby turned from his com to look across the cramped bridge at Captain Eric Masters. If Jacobi looked young for her rank, then Masters looked far too senior to be commanding a ship little larger than an old-fashioned frigate, but, again, appearances could be deceiving. Despite her tiny size (she had no flag bridge, and Østby couldn't even fit all of his abbreviated staff onto her command deck) MANS Chameleon, Østby's flagship, was something entirely new in the history of galactic warfare.[...]
"Take us out," he said simply, and Chameleon twitched ever so gently as the web of tractor and pressor beams which had held her exactly centered in the freighter Wallaby's cavernous Number Two hold were switched off at last.
A gentle puff of compressed air from the specially modified thruster packs strapped to her bow sent her drifting backward, without the pyrotechnics of her normal fusion-powered thrusters. That would have been . . . contraindicated inside a ship, Østby thought dryly while he watched the visual display as the hold's bulkheads went sliding by.
It was the first time they'd made an actual combat deployment, but Østby's captains and crews had practiced this same maneuver dozens of times before ever leaving the Mesa System.[...]The deployment maneuver took quite a while, but no one was in a tearing hurry, and no one wanted to risk a last-minute, potentially catastrophic accident. Wallaby had made her alpha translation thirty minutes ago, and she was still several hours away from the wormhole junction she'd ostensibly come here to transit. At this range, even a fully conventional ship Chameleon's size would almost certainly have been invisible even to Manticoran sensor arrays (assuming its skipper was smart enough not to bring up his wedge, at any rate). Not that anyone intended to take any chances.
Chameleon slid completely free of Wallaby, like an Old Earth shark sliding tail-first from its mother's womb, and the modified packs fell away as the jettisoning charges blew. They disappeared quickly into the Stygian gloom—this far out from the system primary, even the star gleam on Chameleon's own flanks was scarcely visible[...]
"Very good," Masters repeated, and looked at his executive officer. "Take us into stealth and bring up the spider, Chris," he said.

Storm From the Shadows - Ch 51 wrote:At the moment, Kolstad was concentrating all of her own attention on the readouts which showed the exact position of every unit of Topolev's task force, literally down to the last centimeter. All twenty of his ships were tractored together into two big, ungainly formations, nine hundred kilometers apart, as they floated with the closest thing possible to a zero velocity relative to one another and to the normal-space universe they'd left three months earlier.[...]
Absolutely nothing seemed to happen for the next two or three minutes, but appearances were deceiving, and Topolev waited patiently, watching his own displays, as Task Force One of the Mesan Alignment Navy translated ever so slowly and gradually back into normal-space.
This maneuver had been tested against the Mesa System's sensor arrays by crews using the early Ghost-class ships even before the first of the Shark-class prototypes had ever been laid down, and Task Force One had practiced it over a hundred times once the mission had been okayed. [...]
Both groups of his ships slid gradually, carefully towards the hyper wall, making the slowest possible translation back into normal-space.
It was physically impossible for any ship to cross the hyper wall without radiating a hyper footprint, but the strength of that footprint was—to a large extent, at least—a factor of the base velocity the ship in question wanted to carry across the wall. The alpha translation's bleed factor was roughly ninety-two percent, and all of that energy had to go somewhere. There was also an unavoidable gravitic spike or echo along the interface between the alpha bands of hyper-space and normal-space that was effectively independent of a ship's speed. Reducing velocity couldn't do anything about that, but a slow, "gentle" translation along a shallow gradient produced a much weaker spike, as well.[...]
"Translation completed, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Vivienne Henning, his staff astrogator, announced. "Preliminary checks indicate we're right on the money: one light-month out on almost exactly the right bearing."
"Good work," Topolev complemented her, and she smiled with pleasure at the sincerity in his voice. He smiled back, then cleared his throat. "And now that we're here, let's go someplace else."
"Yes, Sir."
The twenty Shark-class ships, each about midway between an old-fashioned battleship and a dreadnought for size, deactivated the tractors which had held them together. Reaction thrusters flared, pushing them apart, although they didn't seek the same amount of separation most starships their size would have. Then again, they didn't need that much separation.
A few moments later, they were underway at a steady seventy-five gravities.

Theemile wrote:Freighters max out at 8.5 Mtons. (At much over that mass, freighters would be limited to the ~50Gs that Grav plates will negate, since you cannot built a compensator to handle those masses, and we're still not certain if it could move Grav waves and wormholes since it does not have a compensator.) Anything large enough to carry the >9 Mton LD would garner more attention than the LD itself would.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:Freighters max out at 8.5 Mtons. (At much over that mass, freighters would be limited to the ~50Gs that Grav plates will negate, since you cannot built a compensator to handle those masses, and we're still not certain if it could move Grav waves and wormholes since it does not have a compensator.) Anything large enough to carry the >9 Mton LD would garner more attention than the LD itself would.

Yep. I figure if anybody build a mega-sized freighter, well beyond the compensator mass/volume limit, then the customs agents of every system it passed through would be looking for any possible excuse to board and inspect it - just to be able to see this crazy thing in person. (And a launch cradle and bay capable of holding a >9 mton ship would be hard to miss during even the most casual inspection )

Any even long long range grav sensors you probably wouldn't be able to mistake anything else for it. (Well if it was "only" up to 16 mtons then it might have a similar acceleration signature as the largest forts. But those don't drop out of hyper into your system

Storm from the Shadows Ch. 48 wrote:"Very good," Masters repeated, and looked at his executive officer. "Take us into stealth and bring up the spider, Chris," he said.

cthia wrote:However, none of that alone guarantees that the MA won't build one. Or several even. And use them for months until certain systems (where they intend to use them for nefarious purposes) get accustomed to seeing them. When they've become old news.

Plus, the questionable accessories inside its cavernous hold can be hidden and or disguised like the bays of a Q-ship. In fact, the monsters can actually be used for legitimate purposes, carrying huge amounts of legitimate goods from Manticore to all points headed to RF Systems. The MBS is certainly in no position to turn down big orders. And there is nothing wrong arriving in system with an empty freighter (after dumping the LD) ready to work the heck out of the stevedores.

Question: From the Ghost's arrival.

Storm from the Shadows Ch. 48 wrote:"Very good," Masters repeated, and looked at his executive officer. "Take us into stealth and bring up the spider, Chris," he said.

The way that reads implies that the stealth system can be activated without the Spider Drive.

Which of course leads me right back to whether the LD can have its stealth activated while inside the monstrous freighter.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'd forgotten how close in, relatively speaking, the Ghosts were able to be dropped. Give the Ghosts some fire control links and you could drop off an infrastructure killing strike of Ghosts & Grazer torps from a freighter or three (spread out over time & distance as necessary to avoid looking suspicious)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
They don't want to have to do that. And the MAN needs to be right in the middle of the pack of what freighters do so it wouldn't draw attention to itself and cause customs to board and perform an inspection.

kzt wrote:There are actually several things here that you could use to mess with. Like say a freighter comes in, doesn’t raise it’s wedge, you send out a patrol and the patrol is never heard from again and the freighter vanishes.

What is the response?

Then, what happens to the next freighter?