?

Brigade XO wrote:Ok, so the Ghosts got dropped off like the Silver Bullett did at Beowulf and the Sharks still had to transition from hyper way, way out from Manticore and yet the 20 or so BB sized Sharks tractored together- to presente a single point of disruption- still made it from Darius to both Manticore and Grayson in a tactically reasonable time. So the Spider drives are probably not that much slower- but we don't know.

The acceleration is not relevant, unless it's incredibly low. The majority of the trip is spent cruising at your top speed, which is limited by the particle shielding. It's actually possible that those ships had better particle shielding than the military norm, since they were going to run two months in n-space. What's more, those ships likely also mounted the streak drive, allowing them to hit the Kappa band and make their passage much more quickly.

Besides, we know what their acceleration was: no more than 150 gravities.

The question we haven't seen the answer to is whether they mount Warshawski sails and the associated alpha nodes. We're told that they have the distinct triangular cross-section, but it's still possible they have a ring at either end so they can mount the nodes. If they don't have Warshawski sails, that severely limits their passage time for two reasons: first, they can't enter grav waves in hyperspace, which is how ships get their best speed. More importantly, they can't transit the Darius-Felix wormhole.

As prototypes, they may not have had them. But I think we've been told by RFC that they can transit wormholes and therefore the LD will definitely have the nodes.

The LD's might have trouble comming in on Manticore and now (if a signifcant growth has taken place) at Haven and Grayson (we didn't see anything about Grayson investigationg "sensor echos". On the other hand, very very very few places have either the sensor net depth and range out of the system beyond the hyperlimit to pick up the LDs. And then they need someting to be able to go out and investigate said sensor ghost.

I think it's a given that Manticore has shared the technology and now Beowulf, Haven, Grayson, and New Berlin are protected by equivalent systems. Erewhon, Torch and possibly Smoking Frog may have export versions of them.

The ONLY reasons the Alignment didn't go after Haven in Oyster Bay were 1) they didn't have enough ships =and probably weapons like the GT's- and by that point the Alignment knew that Haven had a hidden major construction base for ships and everything else to outfit those ships and diverting anyting from Manticore and Grayson would only have minimal effect on Haven's ongoing growth in military capability. Besides.....they also had a really good chance that Manticore and Grayson would decide it was Haven (since Haven was seriously hurting from the Battle of Manticore and the Alliance would "just" put together a force to smash the Haven home system in retribution. They didn't figure on Harrington being at Haven wth that fleet and having a really good feel for what was in the system.
Manticore and Grayson reacting by at least trashing every Haven system they could assign at least a few ships to essentialy do something like Partian Shot in a fit of anger was more along the lines of what the Alighment wanted. That would cut back Haven, make for a truly vicious next round or retribution/revenge and the League would still get broken later.

Very good points: an attack on the known Havenite shipyards would have reduced their capacity by at most 50%, since no one knew where Bolthole was, and that Honor was in Nouveau Paris negotiating face-to-face with Theisman and Pritchart when the attack occurred. I think they'd have come to the conclusion eventually that it couldn't be Haven since the Havenites didn't have the technology, not even rogue elements, but having Honor and Nimitz' reading of them had to settle the case.

By the way, the stealth attack wouldn't have worked in Bolthole, even if the Alignment had known where it is or does find out in the future. The Sanctuary system is behind a large dust cloud, the reason why the lost colony had not been found. If the Sharks and the torpedoes had come screaming in at a meaningful fraction of the speed of light, they'd have left a pretty evident trail of disturbed gas. They'd have to come in VERY slowly, which presents tactical problems of their own.

cthia wrote: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.

Yes the stealth system is totally independent of the drive system (which is also stealthy). Remember the Ghost that ended up worried about being unexpectedly up close (under 2 LS]) with a GSN cruiser squadron (that was out on an training exercise) had its stealth up but had its drive down to further minimize its signature. [MoH Ch9] (That scene also mentioned that "spider’s signature flares as it comes up" meaning power-up is when it is most detectable; so the Ghost remained coasting ballistically rather than risking bringing up the drive to edge away from the cruisers)


And here's the text description of the stealth system.

Mission of Honor - Ch. 9 wrote:Unlike the starships of most navies, the MAN’s scouts hadn’t settled for simple smart paint. Other ships could control and reconfigure their “paint” at will, transforming their hulls—or portions of those hulls—into whatever they needed at any given moment, from nearly perfectly reflective surfaces to black bodies. The Ghosts’ capabilities, however, went much further than that. Instead of the relatively simpleminded nanotech of most ships’ “paint,” the surface of Apparition’s hull was capable of mimicking effectively any portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Her passive sensors detected any incoming radiation, from infrared through cosmic rays, and her computers mapped the data onto her hull, where her extraordinarily capable nannies reproduced it. In effect, anyone looking at Apparition when her stealth was fully engaged would “see” whatever the sensors exactly opposite his viewpoint “saw,” as if the entire ship were a single sheet of crystoplast.
That was the theory, at least, and in this case, what theory predicted and reality achieved were remarkably close together.
It wasn’t perfect, of course. The system’s greatest weakness was that it couldn’t give complete coverage. Like any stealth system, it still had to deal with things like waste heat, for example. Current technology could recapture and use an enormous percentage of that heat, but not all of it, and what they couldn’t capture still had to go somewhere. And, like other navies’ stealth systems, the MAN’s dealt with that by radiating that heat away from known enemy sensors. Modern stealth fields could do a lot to minimize even heat signatures, but nothing could completely eliminate them, and stealth fields themselves were detectable at extremely short ranges, so any ship remained vulnerable to detection by a sufficiently sensitive sensor on exactly the right (or wrong) bearing.

[/quote]Though it's possible to read that text as implying the Ghosts also had the best stealth of any MAlign ship - meaning the Sharks (and possibly the Lenny Dets) accepted somewhat less compromise and, in consequence, got a somewhat less capable stealth system.

Also, for all that, they weren't actually sure that stealth system was actually superior to Manticore's (though of course the spider drive is stealthier than a wedge - but that's independent of the stealth systems on the ship hull)

Storm From the Shadows - Ch. 51 wrote:The Mesan Alignment had plowed quite a few decades—and several trillion credits—into the development of its own stealth technology, however, and the MAN was at least two generations ahead of the Solarian League in that capability. Their analysts' best estimate was that their stealth systems were equal to those of Manticore at a minimum, and probably at least marginally superior, although no one was prepared to assume anything of the sort.

As for bringing it up inside a cargo bay (should such a large bay exist) you might be able to but that likely means the ship's power is hot, which means you're generating lots of heat. So you'd likely rapidly run into problems with having to dump waste heat into the bay. And even with the stealth system active, at the range of meters I doubt it would hide a Spider ship from customs inspectors inspectors. At that range you'd get issues with parallax; and if the bay was pressurized having (say) 90% of it full of an invisible ship would do weird things to the expected echoes, and of course one of the inspectors might just bump into the thing. (And it couldn't really hide itself as anything but an empty bay - so you're going to get questions about why you've got a unitary bay more than large enough to carry the largest normal ships in the Honorverse -- and are running around with it totally empty.


Just don't see carrying LennyDets like Ghosts as a reasonable or useful thing to do. Something that works on ships little larger than a frigate (probably no more than 60,000 tons) is just pointless and insane on something literally hundreds of times larger.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Clearly, both translations were detected. The one a light-month away triggered the ready DDron investigation, while the freighter didn't. That means that, unlike what the text suggests, the freighter was on a deadline to turn its wedge on. If the Junction TC noticed the translation but then no wedge for too long, it would mark the ship. Since it was "a few hours" from the Junction, that means it was at a distance of less than 8 light-minutes (1 AU), since a freighter at 150 gravities needs 8 hours to cross that distance for a zero-zero.

Actually I think the Wallaby was already under wedge before the Ghosts were deployed.
I only posted what seemed like the relevant part of the scene - but it actually starts with the phrase

Storm From the Shadows - Ch 48 wrote:"We're coming up on the deployment point now, Commodore."

And from the part I did quote we know they've been in the system for 30 minutes. You do carry over a tiny bit of residual velocity from hyper into normal space - but I seriously doubt they were coasting up to their deployment point for half an hour.
Seems far more probable that the freighter got underway within minutes of transition and then, when it reached the desired point about a half hour's travel from their emergence point, pushed the Ghosts out while still under power.

Even if the cargo bay opens out the top or bottom you've still got dozens of km between the ship hull and the danger area around the wedge. Ghosts are a lot larger than shuttles and pinnaces - but we know that warships normally have their boat bays on their underside and we've had scenes with pinnaces launching or recovering from warships that are accelerating.

And frankly, given the acceleration of even a freighters wedge, once you drive beyond the compensator field and stop getting carried along with it the wedge will very quickly move clear of you as you're left behind.

It seems the LDs only have to adopt the tactic of hypering in with a freighter. Perhaps an RF freighter. Hmm... wouldn't that represent a new type of escort? An insertion escort?

Jonathan, about activating stealth inside a cargo hold. I was only contemplating it as an emergency. For instance, when an enemy DD is enroute to put an eye on things. Or while in the proximity of other freighters that are too close for comfort. Being able to launch the LD under extreme conditions would be a plus, if such a freighter is built.

cthia wrote:It seems the LDs only have to adopt the tactic of hypering in with a freighter. Perhaps an RF freighter. Hmm... wouldn't that represent a new type of escort? An insertion escort?

Jonathan, about activating stealth inside a cargo hold. I was only contemplating it as an emergency. For instance, when an enemy DD is enroute to put an eye on things. Or while in the proximity of other freighters that are too close for comfort. Being able to launch the LD under extreme conditions would be a plus, if such a freighter is built.

Scanners will still see 2 hyper insertions; you carry SOOOOOOO much energy over during the transition it's hard to hide.

The Shark group transition was only only hidden because they came through with zero velocity and at 2 light months distance from the scanners. any closer, and with any normal velocity, they would have been independantly identified.

And as for a zero velocity insertion at a normal distance, nobody does that - it is a sign you are trying to hide something and you will get boarded and searched.

cthia wrote:Jonathan, about activating stealth inside a cargo hold. I was only contemplating it as an emergency. For instance, when an enemy DD is enroute to put an eye on things. Or while in the proximity of other freighters that are too close for comfort. Being able to launch the LD under extreme conditions would be a plus, if such a freighter is built.

If the DD is coming, the LD had better be out of the bay, spider up and sailing as far and as fast as possible from it. If there's moment the 250-gravity emergency acceleration would be called for, this would be it. The LD needs to be at least a light-second, preferably a million km away from the freighter when the DD arrives for the zero-zero.

Or shoot it out of the sky. Better to lose the element of surprise but live to fight another day than lose the entire LD. One DD for an LD is skewed heavily in favour of the GA.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Jonathan, about activating stealth inside a cargo hold. I was only contemplating it as an emergency. For instance, when an enemy DD is enroute to put an eye on things. Or while in the proximity of other freighters that are too close for comfort. Being able to launch the LD under extreme conditions would be a plus, if such a freighter is built.

If the DD is coming, the LD had better be out of the bay, spider up and sailing as far and as fast as possible from it. If there's moment the 250-gravity emergency acceleration would be called for, this would be it. The LD needs to be at least a light-second, preferably a million km away from the freighter when the DD arrives for the zero-zero.

Or shoot it out of the sky. Better to lose the element of surprise but live to fight another day than lose the entire LD. One DD for an LD is skewed heavily in favour of the GA.

Yes, of course. But if a DD is on its way but the freighter is a bit too close to other freighters, it would be a nice ability if it could activate its stealth immediately before the DD gets too close. Heck, the freighter may be able to draw attention to itself somehow to assist things.

The LD may need to be a light-second away from the DD when it arrives, but it needs to give itself every opportunity to survive. And being detected by another freighter who may be intent on squealing is a non-starter. The LD may be able to dupe the sensors of a freighter inside a light-second.

At any rate, it is just a thought. I hardly think the ability would hurt in a pinch.

cthia wrote:Yes, of course. But if a DD is on its way but the freighter is a bit too close to other freighters, it would be a nice ability if it could activate its stealth immediately before the DD gets too close. Heck, the freighter may be able to draw attention to itself somehow to assist things.

On an 18-million tonne freighter? Of course the DD is coming for it. In fact, it wouldn't matter how many other ships were around: if the DD is coming, they're ALL getting inspected. Destroyers aren't dispatched unless something has already gone seriously wrong.

I'd go even as far as saying that a parasite ship should never be in the bay in any system where inspection is possible. The freighter can just skip any non-MAlign-controlled wormholes and not make any calls to ports it doesn't have to. Go point-to-point to the destination and cut the parasite ship loose before any cutter, much less a destroyer, can come for an inspection.

The LD may need to be a light-second away from the DD when it arrives, but it needs to give itself every opportunity to survive. And being detected by another freighter who may be intent on squealing is a non-starter. The LD may be able to dupe the sensors of a freighter inside a light-second.

At any rate, it is just a thought. I hardly think the ability would hurt in a pinch.

Oh, other freighters? Hmmm... ok, I hadn't thought of that.

But as I said above, the MAN should simply never put itself in that condition. There's nothing to be gained for the freighter to approach other ships or a custom inspection point with its parasite ships still loaded.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:On an 18-million tonne freighter? Of course the DD is coming for it. In fact, it wouldn't matter how many other ships were around: if the DD is coming, they're ALL getting inspected. Destroyers aren't dispatched unless something has already gone seriously wrong.

BTW, one other thing. This may not be the case but I think there's a good chance it is.

The crew of superfreighters are stars among freighter crews.

They're probably well-paid and they take the jobs few others want, because the voyages without grav waves and wormholes take much longer, not to mention the slow plodding at 50 gravities (takes 3x longer to accelerate to cruising speed and to decelerate from that). So any port they stop at they probably don't have to pay for their drinks. Any other ship's crew will buy them a round, either to hear their stories or to simply honour them.

They're also going to always be the target of custom inspections because the custom agents will want to see the inside of such a ship and whatever the cargo was. Simple curiosity. Moreover, customs engineers will want to see the ship itself.

For those reasons, superfreighters will attract way too much attention anywhere they go.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:On an 18-million tonne freighter? Of course the DD is coming for it. In fact, it wouldn't matter how many other ships were around: if the DD is coming, they're ALL getting inspected. Destroyers aren't dispatched unless something has already gone seriously wrong.

BTW, one other thing. This may not be the case but I think there's a good chance it is.

The crew of superfreighters are stars among freighter crews.

They're probably well-paid and they take the jobs few others want, because the voyages without grav waves and wormholes take much longer, not to mention the slow plodding at 50 gravities (takes 3x longer to accelerate to cruising speed and to decelerate from that). So any port they stop at they probably don't have to pay for their drinks. Any other ship's crew will buy them a round, either to hear their stories or to simply honour them.

They're also going to always be the target of custom inspections because the custom agents will want to see the inside of such a ship and whatever the cargo was. Simple curiosity. Moreover, customs engineers will want to see the ship itself.

For those reasons, superfreighters will attract way too much attention anywhere they go.

But, can simply a new design be enough to assert probable cause? I got the feeling that customs inspections can't just be ordered willy nilly. Hauptman was outraged when Honor did it. It is an inconvenience and a potential waste of the time and resources of the freighter who is on a tight schedule.

Reminds me of when I got pulled over while driving a Lamborghini in California. The cop pulled me over simply so he could have a look under the hood. He was very apologetic. "I'm sorry, you weren't speeding or anything. I'm simply curious."

I was certainly speeding after he was done drooling, trying not to be late for work, even though the car belonged to the son of the company's CEO.

At any rate, the superfreighter would only become a Trojan horse after the galaxy has become accustomed to seeing it.

cthia wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:BTW, one other thing. This may not be the case but I think there's a good chance it is.

The crew of superfreighters are stars among freighter crews.

They're probably well-paid and they take the jobs few others want, because the voyages without grav waves and wormholes take much longer, not to mention the slow plodding at 50 gravities (takes 3x longer to accelerate to cruising speed and to decelerate from that). So any port they stop at they probably don't have to pay for their drinks. Any other ship's crew will buy them a round, either to hear their stories or to simply honour them.

They're also going to always be the target of custom inspections because the custom agents will want to see the inside of such a ship and whatever the cargo was. Simple curiosity. Moreover, customs engineers will want to see the ship itself.

For those reasons, superfreighters will attract way too much attention anywhere they go.

But, can simply a new design be enough to assert probable cause? I got the feeling that customs inspections can't just be ordered willy nilly. Hauptman was outraged when Honor did it. It is an inconvenience and a potential waste of the time and resources of the freighter who is on a tight schedule.

Reminds me of when I got pulled over while driving a Lamborghini in California. The cop pulled me over simply so he could have a look under the hood. He was very apologetic. "I'm sorry, you weren't speeding or anything. I'm simply curious."

I was certainly speeding after he was done drooling, trying not to be late for work, even though the car belonged to the son of the company's CEO.

At any rate, the superfreighter would only become a Trojan horse after the galaxy has become accustomed to seeing it.

Hauptman was outraged for 2 reasons.
First because in practice Basilisk had not been performing the legally permitted customs inspections; and so his ships (and schedule) had gotten used to not having that delay. So he was a little pissed off that customs inspections spot checking started back up.

But the main thing that pissed him off is that after some smuggling was found on his ships Honor began treating all ships of his shipping line, fairly publicly, as likely smugglers. And as such instead of the randomized spot checks that customs inspections normally entail she ordered the maximum inspections supported by law on every single one of them -- full inspection of all cargo on each ship.
This take far longer than more routine spot inspections (and Basilisk had been unable/unwilling to perform even those).


But a customs inspection doesn't require probably cause. It's not a police search. (though you're still likely to get pushback if the inspections are applied arbitrarily or discriminatorily unless there's good reason to support it. Honor wasn't breaking the law by ordering Hauptman's ships to be searched most thoroughly, while not applying the same to other ships. But if she hadn't had good justification, both from the results of the more routine spot inspection and the additional finds turned up by the deeper scrutiny, then she'd have likely gotten into trouble, through the Admiralty as they bowed to political pressure to reign in someone who would have appears to be following a baseless vendetta.


But like I said, you don't need probable cause. Exactly what ships are subject to customs inspection would be controlled by laws we don't know the full details of. But almost assuredly any ship (other than those covered by diplomatic protections) that picks up or delivers cargo, personnel, passengers, or supplies within a nation's territorial space can be inspected by that system's custom agents. The part we don't know is whether simply using a nation's wormhole legally allows them to perform a customs inspection. (Nor do we know if simply passing through their territorial space without stopping would permit a customs inspection; however this would only apply in n-space, and except for using a wormhole - covered above - there's no legit reason for a freighter to drop out of hyper to drive through someone's system unless they were there for cargo, passengers, or supplies [all of which are accepted reasons for customs inspections]

Basically if a superfreighter was in somebody else's system they're either there for something that itself permits customs to inspect it, or else the fact that they're there without any legitimate business is suspicious enough to justify either the system defense force ordering it to leave, or else stopping and inspecting it as a suspicious vessel.