cthia wrote:That is certainly an interesting twist to it that I had missed. I never envisioned a region safe from energy weapons, but the possibility of it turning out to be the case is quite interesting. Though I'd wager it is not the case. Perhaps a region that further hinders detection even more, and perhaps deflects energy fire enough to rule out accuracy I'd agree. Beyond that is anyone's haphazard guess.
We
do know that energy engagements in grav waves are possible, but missile engagements are not because missiles do not have sails. And you can't survive the shear zone and the wormhole transit without a sail because the wormhole is a grav event. So put the two together and you have the conclusion that the grav shear of the wormhole transit lanes does not sufficiently hinder energy weapons.
Not necessarily. I'm considering the actual shape of the "nook or cranny" the LD actually chooses. Consider the shapes of American states on a map. There are states shaped like a gun, a mitten, a heel, a heart, a shoe. Idaho has a boot and several states have panhandles.
Railroads and other forces helped form these shapes, but they are as irregular as Earth's great wonders. If the turbulence zones have neat little nooks and crannies - a handle a boot or a shoe formed by these zones jutting out - where an LD can descend into without being affected by the turbulence, that would be ideal and much more problematic for the GA. The turbulence is probably not a perfect concentric circle, but rather "pockets." These pockets would be even more impossible to target with missiles.
We do know LDs have sails, but it can't be using one to reach this position. The sail is a 200-km wide gravity event, so it's extremely brilliant. And it can be detected with FTL.
Since the LD didn't use its sails to reach this position, it stands to reason that the missiles can also reach this position using just their wedges. And between the RMN and the MAN, one of them has better maps of the Junction nooks and crannies. You can make your guess which one. Hint: it's not the MAN.
So this and the above lead to the single conclusion that if the RMN can locate a target, they can hit it. It doesn't matter if that is because of nooks and crannies, a negative transit lanes or what have you. I don't think there can be any further discussion on this point.
The only way the LD can survive there is stealth. And that means it can't fire its weapon mounts, be it for offence or defence.
Waiting until it is time to serve that wine, the LD only has to hold out until its objective is achieved. I keep envisioning hours or days long shootouts at fortifications or encampments until the enemy - or criminals - runs out of bullets.
That may be so, but I think it's the opposite of what you're thinking. The forts have way more ammunition than any LD could conceivably carry, even if it has a resupply freighter waiting in hyper and is able to sneak in and out.
They won't need sails if they are sitting in a "depression" which would also make it all the more impossible to hit with missiles.
As above: that's simply not a valid conclusion. If the LD can get to where it is, so can the missiles.
And it doesn't matter if the missiles need to go real slowly to navigate the passage. And if missiles are limited by capacitor charge endurance, Ghost Riders aren't. You can send the GRs on a collision course. That will make a big boom.
Or, you know, LACs. With those BC-sized graser spinal mounts. Again, the LD can't shoot at them lest it reveal its position (see below).
I'm also hesitant to accept they can easily be detected by GR drones if embedded within turbulence. Probably so, but it isn't written in stone. And I'd think GR drones would be picked off by the MA. Didn't the MA detect and destroy stealthy GA platforms in the last book? It is not poorly defended if you can't see it, especially with other fires being lit beforehand. Forts may suddenly start exploding or coming under attack giving them their own problems, and surely other LDs which are in the system along with the eggs ALL of the LDs have laid are busy hatching and raising hell. It may turn out to be too late when the RMN discovers they have a fly, err spider in the ointment.
Shooting at the GRs or LACs or missiles reveals your position. There are two dozen forts within a 1.5-light-second radius. In the three seconds it takes for the light of the PDLCs to reach the fort sensors and the graser beam to arrive back, the LD can't move more than 3.6 km, which maybe one full length. And this is assuming the worst case scenario: all forts are 1.5 light-seconds away and have no FTL drones closer by. The scenario the MAN needs to plan for is that there is a fort that can deliver a graser beam to the source of the shot in under half a second -- a 612-meter max displacement.
Add to that that each fort has a easily dozen graser mounts and there will be at least a dozen of them in range. That means a full gross (144) of graser beams bracketing your position. And this is assuming there aren't LACs even closer by.
That means the LD can't use its weapon mounts.
Jonathan_S wrote:And even if the LD does pack a bubble sidewall, which could be used within the zone, that just makes them even more visible. And the very worst case, if the zone is big enough to keep laserheads from reaching it's heart, the defensive forts move in for a convnetional energy range duel with both side protected by sidewalls. That's a fair fight - but one where the spider ship is almost certainly badly outnumbered by the defending forts.
Eh, no. The LD is outgunned by a single fort. Two dozen on one is not a fair fight.
The LD's redeeming quality is to have deployed its full payload of graser torpedoes to target such forts. But it should have done that
before the stand-by forts raise their bubblewalls. That won't work on the action-ready ones, though.
Again, that is certainly an interesting scenario. But the LD will have friends and booby traps it has set, and other items and surprises it brought along to the party. And the small little problem of this party's "Pound Cake" being lit all over the quadrant.
That might be true, but not in the strategy you describe. If the LD or LDs are going to engage the forts, then their main operational goal is
engaging the forts and defending military ships, not commerce-raiding the ships transiting the Junction, of which there's only one per minute per terminus. That calls for a different plan, one that does not put the LD inside the energy range of the forts it's engaging.
If the MAN brings 4 squadrons of LDs and deploys Silver Bullets to take out the non-action-ready forts before they bring up their sidewalls and placing weapon platforms near the transit lanes from Trevor's Star and Basilisk, it might be an interesting battle. The forts may even lose. We'd then move to a discussion on whether the LD squadrons can hold the Junction against Home Fleet, arriving in 45-90 minutes, depending on where it's sitting inside the Manticore-A hyperlimit (answer: they can't).
But again, this is not the assault you're describing. The attack on commerce is secondary. The moment something happens, the ships in the transit queue that do transit will advise the other termini not to send any ships until All Clear is received (authenticated by RMN and ACS, so the MAN can't fake it). Any ship outside the Junction's hyperlimit transits away, while those inside of it will scatter. If the MAN has weapons to spare, it can target the fixed infrastructure in the Junction zone. So it can create a lot of economic damage to Manticore and cause it considerable loss of prestige.
But disrupting the Junction means attacking
everyone's economic interest. Even the RF will feel some of that.
Eventually the LD may be found. But then it has to be successfully engaged. And all within the allotted time frame the MA's plan needs for it to be successful. I keep thinking about the "detour" missiles have to make trying for an up the kilt shot, which isn't easy even when they can see what they're aiming at.
And what is that allotted time? There's one transit per minute per terminus, so 6 targets of opportunity per minute, until that dries up by the messages carried by ships that transited or by the other sides realising that incoming transit has stopped. So if I'm generous, I give it 10 minutes, meaning the LD can take out 60 incoming ships (assuming all termini are sending at max transit rate) and maybe another dozen that were outgoing and in range.
Meanwhile, every time it fires, the targetting solutions from the defending ships get much better. Every minute that passes, the forts, LACs and other defending ships get closer so they get a more probable energy weapon shot.
And what is its exit strategy? Even if all that which you supposed is true, it has to get out of that disturbed region of space, at which point the defenders will be waiting for it. 10 minutes is enough to surround the region of space with missiles, enough to bring the probability of a hit to near certainty (a 3-stage missile can use one stage to accelerate close by and the second stage to decelerate to zero-zero, leaving the third stage to power the warhead). The defenders need only to get lucky a single time, since a missile beam striking will compromise the LD's stealth. The LD needs to get lucky every time, against a conservative estimate of 50 missiles per fort every 20 seconds (150 per minute), for a total of 3600 missiles per minute, for 8 minutes. That's 28800 missiles ready to fire at point blank range.
The LD stealth can be as good as you want it to be. It cannot hide the ship from even a myopic missile sensor at less than 1000 km range.
I'm sure that tactic can be used in conjunction. The opening phase of a real attack by the LDs will be for all of the marbles, truly a short victorious war. Any small part of the plan only has to hold out "long enough." We all can list exhausting instances of a small fortified force holding out and fending off insurmountable odds for inconceivable amounts of time. War is full of such examples. By the time it is discovered there's a spider in your hair, he has already bitten you, laid eggs and spun web.
Then please lay out that strategy, as I did above by engaging the forts first, not the commerce.
And if you want an SVW, what's the strategy for dealing with Home Fleet?
Another point. This plan will call for the MA having a full map of the region. I think they already have that, or can easily get their hands on it, with the original survey data. It may come down to the MA being more familiar with the "exact" details of the region than the RMN, other than general data. Think of the movies and TV shows whereby someone had to quickly fetch the schematics of a building and all of the possible hidden crevices, crawlspaces, drain pipes and the like. Some which are no longer on the map. The entire area is probably mapped right down to the last grav wave as far as the entry and exit lanes of the WH. But what about the fine detail that no one expects is even worth noting.
Sure, the region around the Junction is the single most detailed light-second radius of space in the Known Galaxy. Everyone has maps for it.
But who has the best ones and most up to date, the RMN or the MAN?
