Wormhole Assault: MA Style

DW wrote:If your thought is that they're going to smother the area outside the hyper limit with frigates ' I'm sorry, with non-frigates ' in order to significantly reduce response times and possibly even pick up spider drives coming in (somehow) without hyper footprints, then how many of them do you intend to build? How heavily do you intend to saturate the area outside the hyper limit, and how big a zone do you intend to saturate? Detection range against the spider drive is going to be very, very short. (I'm not going to tell you how short just yet, but it's safe to say that it will be substantially less than five light-minutes unless you already know essentially where the target is.)

cthia wrote:Two things:

1) How can an LD enter a system (somehow) without a hyper footprint? Is this an omen about an LD's capability???

It can't. Context here matters. David was reacting to the poster's suggestion of seeding the approach lanes to detect an incoming ship whose hyper footprint hadn't been detected or had been missed. He did not say that it was possible to build a ship whose translation couldn't be detected.

2) Significantly less than five light minutes could mean significantly less than five. Significantly less than five may translate to at least half of five. Two and a half light minutes as its native capability. Which might be extended even more if it goes darker, i.e., the LD's version of running silent like subs. Which would approach one light minute, ThinksMarkedly.

We know that the MAN's own efforts show detection of significantly less than five light-minutes: one light second. Jonathan wrote above one light-minute, but I think I remembered correctly. 5 light-minutes is 300 times one light-second, linearly. In volume, we're talking about 27 million times. That's significant.

There's a lot of range there. I'd be very happy with a 1 light-minute detection of a spider ship. That's 18 million kilometres. That's far more than the volume of the Junction's hyper limit, and beyond the striking range of any known energy weapon by a factor of 20. Given FTL comms, the GA defenders would also have only 1 second of delay; given the nature of FTL vs non-FTL, actions by the defenders will be seen by the attacker with a 59-second delay.

But I don't think the detection range will be 1 light-minute. I think that a 2-million km range (6⅔ light-seconds) would be great already, which puts the attacker outside of energy range. 1 million, the maximum range of energy weapons, would still enable some defensive actions.

Jonathan_S wrote:[Well we already knew that the MAlign's current best detectors are only good against a Spider ship at around one light minute; so extrapolating the same from a claim of "substantially less than five light-minutes" doesn't seem to be telling us anything new.

It was one light SECOND. Which given the inverse square function means you need a detector 90,000 times more sensitive to spot at 5 light minutes.

I don’t see any possible way of doing anything close to that without a functioning MAN spider to use for testing, as you are going to need to exploit some sort of side channel.

kzt wrote:It was one light SECOND. Which given the inverse square function means you need a detector 90,000 times more sensitive to spot at 5 light minutes.

Volume, not area, because of course the MAlign wouldn't help by staying on the ecliptic. So the sensitivity needs to be cubed: 27 million times.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We know that the MAN's own efforts show detection of significantly less than five light-minutes: one light second. Jonathan wrote above one light-minute, but I think I remembered correctly. 5 light-minutes is 300 times one light-second, linearly. In volume, we're talking about 27 million times. That's significant.

Thanks for catching that (and thanks to kzt who also pointed this mistake out). Guess that's what I get from trusting memory and not double checking.

The scene I was thinking of from MoH Ch. 28 does in fact say "But the spider also had one overwhelming advantage: it was effectively undetectable by any sensor system deployed by any navy (including the MAN itself) at any range much beyond a single light-second."

(I've edited my earlier post to show this correction)

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We know that the MAN's own efforts show detection of significantly less than five light-minutes: one light second. Jonathan wrote above one light-minute, but I think I remembered correctly. 5 light-minutes is 300 times one light-second, linearly. In volume, we're talking about 27 million times. That's significant.

Thanks for catching that (and thanks to kzt who also pointed this mistake out). Guess that's what I get from trusting memory and not double checking.

The scene I was thinking of from MoH Ch. 28 does in fact say "But the spider also had one overwhelming advantage: it was effectively undetectable by any sensor system deployed by any navy (including the MAN itself) at any range much beyond a single light-second."

(I've edited my earlier post to show this correction)

Yes, thanks to everyone. But don't sweat it, humans are not infallible. Which is why we can't speak for God.

I was SURE that I read one light second somewhere. ThinksMarkedly. (rib). But as I pointed out before, I wonder about the conditions of their test. Did their own ships know the LD was out there? And where to look?

Plus, like a sub, is that its very best stealth? Like while it is "running silent" ... like subs?

All of the above is part of the reason I think an LD can manage to read your daily newspaper right along with you and you not know it's there.

Sure, there is a chance it can be detected. And risky it is. Submarine warfare has been risky business for subs since the invention of subs. It also takes a very special kind of crew.

But, like subs, certain missions call for your very best officer. He would be the one who everyone is saying can sneak up on a skunk and steal his stink.

cthia wrote:I was SURE that I read one light second somewhere. ThinksMarkedly. (rib). But as I pointed out before, I wonder about the conditions of their test. Did their own ships know the LD was out there? And where to look?

Yes, the books do say that the "defender" did know where to look.

But they do not say whether there was active scanning going on, or just passive.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I was SURE that I read one light second somewhere. ThinksMarkedly. (rib). But as I pointed out before, I wonder about the conditions of their test. Did their own ships know the LD was out there? And where to look?

Yes, the books do say that the "defender" did know where to look.

But they do not say whether there was active scanning going on, or just passive.

Thanks. That is interesting, and it also means that they knew they were out there and therefore they should be looking.

Regarding whether the scans were active or passive. I would assume the test was to determine the effectiveness of their stealth. IMO, only the most reliable scans would truly determine that. So, active scans were most likely used.

On second thought, it should undoubtedly also be of interest knowing exactly how much a Spider might get away with during passive scans.

cthia wrote:Thanks. That is interesting, and it also means that they knew they were out there and therefore they should be looking.

Regarding whether the scans were active or passive. I would assume the test was to determine the effectiveness of their stealth. IMO, only the most reliable scans would truly determine that. So, active scans were most likely used.

On second thought, it should undoubtedly also be of interest knowing exactly how much a Spider might get away with during passive scans.

If they were simulating detection by an enemy, an enemy wouldn't know where to look. So an enemy would be doing omnidirectional scans, which is the opposite of focused.

It's not clear in the HV if there is a distinction between active and passive scans, like there is on some other universes, where keeping an active scan would be prohibitively expensive on the equipment. It's possible that HV sensor technology is always using active scans (when not under stealth), but I don't know for sure. We've also never seen anything mentioned about active gravitic scans, and quite in fact the detection times we've heard were one way, so it does seem like there is no "gradar" (which is something that can be new Manty tech and natural evolution of FTL comms).

But if there is such a thing as either active or focused scans, it's not what an unsuspecting enemy would be using.

The only active scan is radar and even against not absurdly stealthy vessels it has been said to have a fairly short range. Like a few LS. Radar drops faster than an inverse square law because there are two inverse square law elements, the transmitter and the target, involved. I think the sum total is inverse 4th power, which means you need absurd power for longe ranger, even by honorverse standards. And as you can be detected by inverse square law, if you radiate to pick up a target at a few light seconds I suspect you can be heard and localized at light hours.

Not that anyone would send some highly stealthy weapon to home on your radar…

The vast majority of honorverse detection and tracking seems to be passive.

kzt wrote:The only active scan is radar and even against not absurdly stealthy vessels it has been said to have a fairly short range. Like a few LS. Radar drops faster than an inverse square law because there are two inverse square law elements, the transmitter and the target, involved. I think the sum total is inverse 4th power, which means you need absurd power for longe ranger, even by honorverse standards. And as you can be detected by inverse square law, if you radiate to pick up a target at a few light seconds I suspect you can be heard and localized at light hours.

Not that anyone would send some highly stealthy weapon to home on your radar…

The vast majority of honorverse detection and tracking seems to be passive.

Aye, this is my take as well. It's why active scanning is so seldom used - it takes any stealthiness you may have had and obliterates it. They might also expose friendly units operating under stealth.

Short-ranged active scans are very powerful, almost offensively so:

HotQ wrote:"This is ridiculous," McKeon muttered. The LACs were less than a light-second away and still not saying a word! Unless he wanted to assume Grayson had suffered some sort of fleet-wide communications failure, these turkeys had to be up to something. But what? If this was some sort of oddball exercise, he was less than amused by it.
"All right, Tactical," he said finally. "If they want to play games, let's play back. Get me a hull map off their lead unit."
"Aye, aye, Sir!" There was a grin in Carstairs's normally cold voice, and McKeon's lips twitched as he heard it. The radar pulse it would take to map a ship's hull at this range would practically melt the LAC's receivers, and most navies would understand the message he was about to send as well as Carstairs did - it was a galaxy-wide way of shouting "Hey, stupid!" at someone.

At the beginning of that chapter, these LACs brought up their impellers and were detected at around 2.5 light seconds on passives. Actives are not necessarily that short-ranged, though...

In SVW, the Havenite cruiser collecting Argus intelligence was located by a radar pulse at 18 million kilometres after giving its position away by using a com laser which happened to brush a Manticoran DD. That's sixty light seconds.