Wormhole Assault: MA Style

Theemile wrote:
I believe the issue might be the size of the spider generating equipment. Remember, the Frigate Sized Ghost (50-60 Ktons) carries no offensive weapons. The RMN analysis of the Station attacks was that each attack, if carried out by the RMN, could have been accomplished by a single SD(p), but actually took 9 Sharks (or ~5x the tonnage) for each attack.

If so, a competitive Shark CA might mass as much as an Agamemnon or Nike Class BC - The Shark (measured in offensive capabilities) might be a classed a BC.

We've already seen multiple classes in the fleet - namely the Ghost class of scouts. I don't know if intermediate ship classes of Spider drive ships necessarily make sense. The MAN will need to define roles and design ships to fill them. If so, given it's known deficiencies, a spider patrol ship (for example) might not make sense, in the same reason that wet navy Cruisers never received true successful submarine versions of themselves (using the argument that a WWII submarine is a tactical fork of the Torpedo Boat Destroyer line)- the concept did not provide a feasible replacement for the big gun cruiser, and not followed.

It seems we'll definitely keep at least 2 classes, the Ghosts which providing pre-attack scouting, and can emplace the fire control relays they used for maximum range 'sniping', and the Lennard Detwilers.

Still, if they follow the WWI/WWII submarine paradigm which includes a focus on anti-shipping strikes, it seems a LD is far too large and expensive to waste on hunting freighters (or even punching out infrastructure in poorly defended systems). It'd make sense to build something smaller, maybe even smaller than a Shark but which was designed from the keel up with an internal magazine for GTs (unlike the Shark). Maybe it has a spinal tube for them on each end; or maybe since it's hunting freighter or less defended infrastructure, it doesn't need the velocity of a true launch tube and it can put the GT mag next to a boat bay and float out the torps like a shuttle.

Though maybe you don't want to get that small. After all in many submarines the limit on their cruise endurance was the number of torpedoes they could carry. It didn't mater if you had food and fuel left if you'd shot yourself dry. (So one of the side benefits of Q-ships, or even a single lightly armed escort, was it discouraged subs from surfacing to use their deck gun. By forcing them to use torpedoes for every attack it decreased their effective patrol density as they had to 'waste' more time returning to port for additional ammo than if they'd been able to use their gun.)


A smaller spider warship probably isn't all that useful if the Spiders get into a set piece battle with a conventional fleet (though I guess it could provide a forward defense screen) - so they may almost never travel in formation with LDs; but you should be able to build more of them for a given investment. That's letting you cover more territory or hit more targets than if you built an all LD and ghost navy.

cthia wrote:

kzt wrote:I’m not at all sure that the assumption that the graser capacitor is exhausted with every shot. David has said that the plasma capacitor that wraps around the mount is capable of running that mount for some time. Not clear how long it is, but in context is was certainly not just one shot.

However, given how rapidly the Bellerophon was able to shoot it’s grasers from the moment it first detected a threat while fat dumb and happy, it doesn’t take very long to power them up

I didn't think so either, but it gets exhausting fighting against the collective.

Logically it can't be so. Or it would imply that the grasers are as much as an energy hog as starting the wedge. And we know that isn't the case.

I think ThinksMarkedly was positing two different types of capacitors. The graser capacitors being able to deliver power faster.

It was mentioned several times that energy weapons have enough power in their "on mount" capacitor rings to fire several shots if cut off from main power. I think this can be read as 2-3 shots not 9-10.

These are plasma capacitors, not electric capacitors. While not in text, I have asserted that they preform more like steam accumulators than capacitors - tanks of steam that provide a local reservoir of pressure, similar to how we would use a pneumatic pump and distributed air flasks/tanks which were continuously topped off by the main supply/pump. The local flask allows for higher working pressures for longer periods than could be instaneously achieved by the pump alone, and a reservoir to be used when removed from the pump system.

Jonathan_S wrote:

A smaller spider warship probably isn't all that useful if the Spiders get into a set piece battle with a conventional fleet (though I guess it could provide a forward defense screen) - so they may almost never travel in formation with LDs; but you should be able to build more of them for a given investment. That's letting you cover more territory or hit more targets than if you built an all LD and ghost navy.

But that goes back to what I said earlier - does a Spider "____" make tactical sense in specific uses. Does a spider convoy escort make sense? Probably not, they are slower than virtually all impeller merchant ships and cannot intercept threats to the convoy. Does a Spider pirate hunter make sense? Probably not, as it cannot run down a Pirate, and would have a hard time reacting to reports of piracy outside it's immediate sensor zone.

In some roles the Spider will excel in - others it won't. I just don't see how you can build a "balanced" navy with all Spider drive ships when against impeller foes.

As I said some time ago, and upstream, the LDs can be configured with varying tactical goodies onboard. Similar to what the Japanese tried to do with its planes before takeoff in WWII.

At any rate, I said over and over again that the impeller ships will come from the RFN in a coordinated attack. Most likely some sort of beef will be orchestrated between the RFN and one or more members of the GA.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:You must not be a cook at all. After the initial prep is done, each successive pizza goes very quickly. With 6 people tossing dough and forming an assembly line, 6 pizzas can be baked simultaneously.

Ok, I am not. I admit I am a very poor cook.

But the metaphor was supposed to stand for the fact that there's still a limitation due to bottlenecks. A pizza oven has the room for so many pizzas inside, so if you can only bake 3 at a time, it doesn't matter how many cooks you have upstream and downstream of the oven: they won't be able to bake any faster than this bottlenecks. In fact, you'll end up with a pileup of work-in-progress materials upstream of the oven and a bunch of idle cooks downstream, waiting for the next batch.

The same applies to building ships. The most obvious limit would be the number of build slips. If you have only 10, you can't build more than 10 ships at a time. If each one takes 2 years from entry to exit in the slip, then you will average 5 ships per year, no matter what.

You can build more slips, but that usually means diverting resources to build the slip that would otherwise go into building a ship. So they may move to making 100 build slips instead of 10, but even if they can add 20 a year, that would be 5 years to hit stride. Meanwhile, they're not building many ships.

Now, maybe they've been building slips for some time, but I don't see that having happened for more than 5 years. The problem is that they hadn't known what ship they would build in those slips until the Shark had proven that the spider-drive warship concept was viable. Who in their right mind would have created a slip for a ship 50% bigger than the biggest RMN SD(P) (or more) without having seen some proof that it can work. Maybe they'd have started a couple of slips for the prototype, but to commission 100 for an unproven design?

And then there's the issue of unproven design. I still find it questionable that they'd order 100 ships without first finding out if they actually can deliver. They will run into teething issues with the first few, will find out that they have to redesign something. Some of those will be yard issues, requiring changes to how a build is done. That's just life and Murphy. Even seen on text that even the arrogant Inner Onion does iterate designs, quod vide Cataphract-A, Cataphract-B, Cataphract-C.

A saying about eggs and a basket come to mind.

You are assuming a lot, so obviously unwilling to take your own advice. How do you know how many building slips the MA has? They obviously have built ships to defend their WH. The boogeyman didn't destroy the GA ships going thru the WH.

You are still judging the Alignment by the norm. These are Alphas. Perhaps they didn't have a proven design, but they knew they had a proven philosophy. You can't hit what you can't see. You can't defend against what you can't see. In fact, had they not unveiled their tech prematurely and warned the GA of what is coming - like the favor the "Q" did for the Federation with the Borg - the entire galaxy would be doomed. The MA are Alphas who do not second-guess themselves.

Plus, the MA has a workforce who was engineered to do one thing. Build. They don't get a pension, a 401-k, vacation pay, or rights to file a grievance with personnel. I imagine they are worked to the bone. They are engineered for it. And they are replenished from test tubes. So, unlike the RMN, the MA may not have a problem finding warm bodies. And they haven't been victims of a war of attrition in battle after meat-grinding battle. And they love what they are doing. Religiously.

So, there is NO bottleneck where it counts. Warm bodies. Warm bodies by the (thousands ? millions) who can build the slips which build the ships like Egyptians working on the Great Pyramids.

There is NO bottleneck coming from the civilians who run the government. And NO bottleneck from assholes sitting in High places high up on a Ridge.

Jonathan_S wrote:Still, if they follow the WWI/WWII submarine paradigm which includes a focus on anti-shipping strikes, it seems a LD is far too large and expensive to waste on hunting freighters (or even punching out infrastructure in poorly defended systems). It'd make sense to build something smaller, maybe even smaller than a Shark but which was designed from the keel up with an internal magazine for GTs (unlike the Shark). Maybe it has a spinal tube for them on each end; or maybe since it's hunting freighter or less defended infrastructure, it doesn't need the velocity of a true launch tube and it can put the GT mag next to a boat bay and float out the torps like a shuttle.

The problem with that is that current GTs are huge. As you said, they'd carry a handful of torpedoes and then shoot themselves dry. That's why the LDs appear to exist: they're the minimum viable size that can carry sufficient torpedoes to make meaningful operational sense.

As

cthia wrote:You are assuming a lot, so obviously unwilling to take your own advice. How do you know how many building slips the MA has? They obviously have built ships to defend their WH. The boogeyman didn't destroy the GA ships going thru the WH.

I am making assumptions, but I am trying to justify those assumptions at the same time, based on what we know and what I consider to be a rational, logic thought process.

I am claiming that they didn't build 100 build slips for 12-million-tonne ships before the 5-million-tonne Sharks proved the concept. And those hadn't yet proved the concept before 1920-1921, so those slips wouldn't have started construction until then.

As for defending the WH, we already know the answer: a BC squadron from the Mannerheim Defence Force sufficed. Those are 1/6th the size of the Sharks and could even be procured from Technodyne, so there's no reason to assume that WH defence implied there being any shipyards in Darius.

No, I'm not saying this proves there weren't. I'm saying that having BCs does not prove they did. But the existence of Ghosts and Sharks does prove those yards existed.

You are still judging the Alignment by the norm. These are Alphas. Perhaps they didn't have a proven design, but they knew they had a proven philosophy. You can't hit what you can't see. You can't defend against what you can't see. In fact, had they not unveiled their tech prematurely and warned the GA of what is coming - like the favor the "Q" did for the Federation with the Borg - the entire galaxy would be doomed. The MA are Alphas who do not second-guess themselves.

I hear you but I do not agree. The Alphas are not stupid. Aside from the echo chamber creating a positive feedback loop, they are more rational than the majority of humankind and less likely to be led astray by emotional arguments. They will second-guess themselves whenever presented with sufficient evidence and we've seen them refining their plans more than once. They do react to external events. Just to name a few: New Tuscany after Monica, Rat Poison after the peace summit was announced, Oyster Bay after Beatrice.

What they won't do is change their world view, since there isn't any evidence that can be shown and logically argued to do so. Following the fruit from the poisonous tree, they will make lots of incorrect decisions. But those decisions are still rational by themselves and logically sound, given the input that went into their making.

From that I am arguing that they wouldn't build 100 slips for ships not yet designed. In fact, I am also arguing they won't build many more slips until the first few LDs are commissioned.

Plus, the MA has a workforce who was engineered to do one thing. Build. They don't get a pension, a 401-k, vacation pay, or rights to file a grievance with personnel. I imagine they are worked to the bone. They are engineered for it. And they are replenished from test tubes. So, unlike the RMN, the MA may not have a problem finding warm bodies. And they haven't been victims of a war of attrition in battle after meat-grinding battle. And they love what they are doing. Religiously.

So, there is NO bottleneck where it counts. Warm bodies. Warm bodies by the (thousands ? millions) who can build the slips which build the ships like Egyptians working on the Great Pyramids.

Sorry, I disagree. The trained population is still a finite number and there are limitations on resource acquisition and processing. We know it takes a decade to train even a slave on menial tasks, much less a willing labour force. And we also know that the LRPB and the Inner Onion have only recently (< 20 years or so) determined that they were close to the endgame, so they couldn't have been creating this labour force for too long. Not to mention that the spider drive breakthrough must have only occurred in the same recent period, so there wouldn't be anything to train on until that happened.

The Great Pyramids is also not a good example for you. It's in fact a counter-example: the Pharaohs wasted slave population like there was no tomorrow, but those things still took decades to build and each Pharaoh only made one big one. That's all the resources permitted them to build.

I also don't buy that they've spent the last 170 years in Darius doing nothing but expand their industrial capacity. That would create a glut without the end in sight. It's a huge risk in investment, since without that end, they wouldn't know what equipment to use, as technology still progressed. Darius has an economy, even if a totally messed up one and disconnected from the Galaxy.

Moreover, the rule in the HV seems to be that this kind of colonial progress is slow: just look at the fact that a system inhabited for 500 years only has a population of 3 billion (Manticore) and another inhabited for over 1900 barely scratches 20 billion (Beowulf). That means the Beowulf population has doubled at an average of more than 100 years, assuming an initial population of 100k. Darius with a population of 3 billion in 170 years is already a far outlier.

All of this is speculation and assumption. But I am trying to ground mine in logical arguments that can be true.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Still, if they follow the WWI/WWII submarine paradigm which includes a focus on anti-shipping strikes, it seems a LD is far too large and expensive to waste on hunting freighters (or even punching out infrastructure in poorly defended systems). It'd make sense to build something smaller, maybe even smaller than a Shark but which was designed from the keel up with an internal magazine for GTs (unlike the Shark). Maybe it has a spinal tube for them on each end; or maybe since it's hunting freighter or less defended infrastructure, it doesn't need the velocity of a true launch tube and it can put the GT mag next to a boat bay and float out the torps like a shuttle.

The problem with that is that current GTs are huge. As you said, they'd carry a handful of torpedoes and then shoot themselves dry. That's why the LDs appear to exist: they're the minimum viable size that can carry sufficient torpedoes to make meaningful operational sense.

As

They're huge compared to missiles, but I'm not convinced they're huge compared to a half million ton hull (equivalent to a very small BC or very large CA). Yes the Sharks were much larger than that and only carried a few torps (strapped on externally). But the Sharks were never designed to be armed with them; they were an engineering test-bed that was evolved into a training platform.

I'd be shocked if you couldn't fit at least 50 torps into something smaller than a Shark if you designed it from the ground up around that system. (Especially if you skimped on Cataphract/missile weapons to keep it closer to a pure stealth attack platform)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The Great Pyramids is also not a good example for you. It's in fact a counter-example: the Pharaohs wasted slave population like there was no tomorrow, but those things still took decades to build and each Pharaoh only made one big one. That's all the resources permitted them to build.

I'd say they're a bad example for another reason. More recent research has (as I understand it) shown that a majority of the workforce on the pyramids wasn't slaves. (Basically the established "history" that Herodotus and other ancient historians handed down to us has been completely refused by modern archeology)

There were about 5,000 salaried employees who formed the core, skilled, workforce (quarry workers, masons, people sailing the stone from quarry to worksite, and the like) then seasonal secondary workers, 16-20,000 would provided less skilled temporary labor during the slow seasons for farming. (But then they'd need to go back to the fields lest Egypt suffer a famine and starve due to lack of farm workers)

But it still took then at least a couple decades of this labor to complete a single pyramid.

ThinksMarkedly wrote: Moreover, the rule in the HV seems to be that this kind of colonial progress is slow: just look at the fact that a system inhabited for 500 years only has a population of 3 billion (Manticore) and another inhabited for over 1900 barely scratches 20 billion (Beowulf). That means the Beowulf population has doubled at an average of more than 100 years, assuming an initial population of 100k. Darius with a population of 3 billion in 170 years is already a far outlier..

How many of the people in Darius are slaves? The normal population growth rate curves don't really apply to them, as another author noted in a different context, you can just activate more incubators out of the reserve, and probably start a new embryo within two weeks of decanting the tube's last occupant. Plus the population just got a one time shot in the arm as a result of Operation Houdini. Even the "citizen" population doesn't have to actually follow the usual growth curves.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:You are assuming a lot, so obviously unwilling to take your own advice. How do you know how many building slips the MA has? They obviously have built ships to defend their WH. The boogeyman didn't destroy the GA ships going thru the WH.

I am making assumptions, but I am trying to justify those assumptions at the same time, based on what we know and what I consider to be a rational, logic thought process.

I am claiming that they didn't build 100 build slips for 12-million-tonne ships before the 5-million-tonne Sharks proved the concept. And those hadn't yet proved the concept before 1920-1921, so those slips wouldn't have started construction until then.

As for defending the WH, we already know the answer: a BC squadron from the Mannerheim Defence Force sufficed. Those are 1/6th the size of the Sharks and could even be procured from Technodyne, so there's no reason to assume that WH defence implied there being any shipyards in Darius.

No, I'm not saying this proves there weren't. I'm saying that having BCs does not prove they did. But the existence of Ghosts and Sharks does prove those yards existed.

You are still judging the Alignment by the norm. These are Alphas. Perhaps they didn't have a proven design, but they knew they had a proven philosophy. You can't hit what you can't see. You can't defend against what you can't see. In fact, had they not unveiled their tech prematurely and warned the GA of what is coming - like the favor the "Q" did for the Federation with the Borg - the entire galaxy would be doomed. The MA are Alphas who do not second-guess themselves.

I hear you but I do not agree. The Alphas are not stupid. Aside from the echo chamber creating a positive feedback loop, they are more rational than the majority of humankind and less likely to be led astray by emotional arguments. They will second-guess themselves whenever presented with sufficient evidence and we've seen them refining their plans more than once. They do react to external events. Just to name a few: New Tuscany after Monica, Rat Poison after the peace summit was announced, Oyster Bay after Beatrice.

What they won't do is change their world view, since there isn't any evidence that can be shown and logically argued to do so. Following the fruit from the poisonous tree, they will make lots of incorrect decisions. But those decisions are still rational by themselves and logically sound, given the input that went into their making.

From that I am arguing that they wouldn't build 100 slips for ships not yet designed. In fact, I am also arguing they won't build many more slips until the first few LDs are commissioned.

Plus, the MA has a workforce who was engineered to do one thing. Build. They don't get a pension, a 401-k, vacation pay, or rights to file a grievance with personnel. I imagine they are worked to the bone. They are engineered for it. And they are replenished from test tubes. So, unlike the RMN, the MA may not have a problem finding warm bodies. And they haven't been victims of a war of attrition in battle after meat-grinding battle. And they love what they are doing. Religiously.

So, there is NO bottleneck where it counts. Warm bodies. Warm bodies by the (thousands ? millions) who can build the slips which build the ships like Egyptians working on the Great Pyramids.

Sorry, I disagree. The trained population is still a finite number and there are limitations on resource acquisition and processing. We know it takes a decade to train even a slave on menial tasks, much less a willing labour force. And we also know that the LRPB and the Inner Onion have only recently (< 20 years or so) determined that they were close to the endgame, so they couldn't have been creating this labour force for too long. Not to mention that the spider drive breakthrough must have only occurred in the same recent period, so there wouldn't be anything to train on until that happened.

The Great Pyramids is also not a good example for you. It's in fact a counter-example: the Pharaohs wasted slave population like there was no tomorrow, but those things still took decades to build and each Pharaoh only made one big one. That's all the resources permitted them to build.

I also don't buy that they've spent the last 170 years in Darius doing nothing but expand their industrial capacity. That would create a glut without the end in sight. It's a huge risk in investment, since without that end, they wouldn't know what equipment to use, as technology still progressed. Darius has an economy, even if a totally messed up one and disconnected from the Galaxy.

Moreover, the rule in the HV seems to be that this kind of colonial progress is slow: just look at the fact that a system inhabited for 500 years only has a population of 3 billion (Manticore) and another inhabited for over 1900 barely scratches 20 billion (Beowulf). That means the Beowulf population has doubled at an average of more than 100 years, assuming an initial population of 100k. Darius with a population of 3 billion in 170 years is already a far outlier.

All of this is speculation and assumption. But I am trying to ground mine in logical arguments that can be true.

Actually, we have tex-ev of there being 10? stations in Darius orbit building the ships - I believe 3 or so at each. POV was of the Spec ops boss (McBryde's old boss) looking at the bases. We've also been told by A. Detweiler that the build speed was not up to Manty snuff - but on Par with the Havenites at Bolthole, or 3 years for an 8.5 Mton SD(p). (Manty build rate was 20 Months in a hard yard for a 8.8 Mton Invictus, 22 in a dipersed yard prior to OB). A. Detweiler's POV also stated in July? 1921 the ship furthest along was not yet 1/2 finished, yet already larger than the ~5 Mton (borderline BB/DN sized) Shark class ships.

I don't have text in front of me, so numbers might be off slightly, but Darius station pov was post CoG.