Attacking Darius:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Let me get this straight. Imagine the War Room with the nice holotank and top brass is assembled to game it all out. I don't imagine the holotank is going to make the job that used to be done with old-fashioned pointers and miniature figures any easier for the admiralty when "virtually" none of the important variables are known.

As I said above, a siege is not the first strategy. The first thing you do to a newly discovered enemy location is surveillance. You watch it to see what assets it has, what its lines of communications and supply are, whether any weaknesses can be spotted in their operating procedures, etc.

No, it shouldn't be the first strategy. But against this foe, it may be the last. So, the plan is to surveil an invisible foe??? And the supposition is that such a highly paranoid population won't be using their stealth at home. That might be true, but banking on it doesn't seem responsible.

Why wouldn't the MA use their stealth 24/7 if they know they have unwanted flies hanging around? And why would you think the MA would not be aware that they have intruders? The plan is to watch invisible infrastructure. How do the watchers know that they are not being watched? If they are, they will be allowed to see only what the MA lets them see. IOW, now the plan is formulated upon misdirections, inaccuracies and ignorance.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Siege is the second option, if outright military victory isn't possible.

Outright military victory will not be possible, however, a siege should never be an option. Well, if you consider that the GA is going to have to force a confrontation with the enemy, then well, trying to pull off a siege will make that happen for certain.

cthia wrote:1. Where are their supply lines?
They could have invisible supply lines already set up in the system. And their invisible ships could be rearmed from system emplacements like the SLN ships were rearmed from the rear with Cataphracts.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Extremely unlikely that the supply ships are invisible all the time.

There's that dangerous word again. Unlikely. If the MA knows their location has been compromised, and/or if they know they are being watched they will take certain precautions. When any major system is under a DEFCON then certain precautions will be taken.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:It's extremely unlikely that the MAN is using stealth freighters with spiders. That would not only increase the operating cost enormously, it would be extremely reckless. It would increase the cost because the spider isn't cheap -- it's a new technology. It changes the hull form from the most advantageous volume/mass ratio (circular cross-section), which means the same mass of ship can carry less cargo. It increases the operating cost because the spider is so slow. And it increases the operating cost because the stealth is also a mass & power penalty to operate, around the clock. All of this increases the maintenance cost of the freighter. And on top of that, it's a security risk, because you multiply the number of spider ships with top-of-the-line stealth technology out there, and only one being detected or, worse, captured, gives the game away.

I don't think there are going to be any freighters whatsoever entering this classified system. I think the MA will have true colliers built upon the spider drive. You talk about a mass and power penalty to operate the spider. In a war, it won't matter. Also, I question whether the GA will be able to get close enough to see supply lines. When hypering into a system their Home Fleet is invisible until they light off their drives. Regardless, I hardly think any ship to ship transfers are visible. Besides, there is a thing called contingency plans, and during war everything changes. Supply lines are moved and closely protected.

Besides, a siege is not a plan to adopt against an entirely self sufficient system. Sure, you may be able to starve them out in a couple of years. If you can at least see your targets. Heck, our government AND our allies couldn't effectively blockade North Korea. NK kept getting supplies from somewhere. A siege is simply a no go.

Most of the questions upstream are mostly known against other foe. You have an idea about the strength of their Home Fleet, their weapons, etc. You normally even know when the enemy must be drawing down Home Fleet to cover weaknesses. You know nothing of the sort against this foe. And getting to that point will take lots of time. In any other system you have your own ships going in and out of the system all of the time. In Darius. No.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Plus, that makes the warships more expensive and/or late too, since they now compete with the freighters for shipyard and other resource allocations.

Even if all of that were true, which I can't see being so, there's the question of being stealth ALL the time. The surveillance ship will focus their scanners and Ghost Riders on the points where the stealth ships must go: the ship yards, the industrial centres, etc. Once the stealth ship opens its doors to load and reload, the stealth is compromised and it s very visible. Then the surveillance ship will just covertly stalk that ship to see where it's going.

What surveillance ship? You think the GA is going to be able to get a ship close enough to surveil a Spider? You do know that any common variety of Spider has Spider senses that tingle?

But really, you think a wedge powered surveillance ship can slink that far into the system??? No. Drones? No. You think any spider driven ship will be visible at range simply because it drops its stealth? At that point it will be no different than a wedge powered ship with the wedge down. Invisible.

cthia wrote:2. Is there a back way into the town?
— "We don't know. There could be another junction leading in and out."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Two junctions in a system? Unless they've already gone through the Twins, they wouldn't think about that.

If you meant whether there may be a junction in a nearby star system, like the Phoenix Wormhole "Junction," then sure. But even then a round-trip time is a week, plus whatever time on the other side.

Yes, I have been saying for eons that Darius could be a system with unusual anomalies. So I don't rule out anything just because the author hasn't shared them with us. But yes, a very close neighboring system could have yet another series of rabbit holes. And once war breaks out and the supply lines get in full swing, deliveries could be made as frequent as they like. But a siege isn't a very good plan. Self sufficient systems simply are not living paycheck to paycheck, freighter to freighter. They've got enough stuff already stockpiled to finish you and your convoy off - what's left of it anyway, after your luggage is destroyed.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Again, tailing the ships that are going from this system to figure out where they're going and who the allies are would be the first order of the day.

Well at least that is a plan that could bear fruit. Although, I caution total reliance upon it. This is a very paranoid foe, and you will simply be shocked at the number of cutouts, back tracking and extraneous routes taken to shake n bake, or to set-up or destroy a tail.

cthia wrote:3. Where are their warships?
— "We don't know."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:A few of them are visible on the shipyards.

See above. That's not true. Even GA ships are not visible when their wedges are down. And these ships have no wedges.

cthia wrote:4. What do they have for system defense?
— "We don't know."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's generally true of any system. Most of the defences aren't advertised and must be discovered by other means, such as leaked intelligence or leaked emissions. Finding out as much as possible about this, such as observing the maintenance of a weapons platform or missile pod, is quite required.

True. But some facts are always known, like the probability of forts launching missiles with wedges, and the range of those missiles is known. The likelihood of mines are known and their location. General knowledge of the main armaments are also known. Here, those kinds of things are totally unknown. And you won't discover anything with informants you have managed to place inside the "system."

cthia wrote:5. What is the order of battle of their Home Fleet?
— "We don't know. We can't see it anyway."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Ditto as above. The ones that are in active patrol will eventually rotate back to receive resupply. At that point, they're visible.

Another point is that the size of the observed shipyards and the pace at which they're constructing now can give an upper number of ships that could have been produced. (In this shipyard, of course; they'd have to wonder if there aren't others in other undiscovered systems)

No Ditto applies here either. Besides, the strength of Home Fleet is generally known. Before the alliance, the SK and Haven were aware of the approximate size of each other's Home Fleet. It could even be determined when Home Fleet was being drawn down to cover weaknesses.

cthia wrote:6. What type of weapons do they have?
— "We don't know."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:As above. You either need intelligence breakthroughs or you need to face them in battle to get their measure.

Now you're coming close to reality. The GA will have to force a confrontation. That is one way to gain intel. You can go back home and let them examine the missile they remove out of your orifice later. Then come back for round 2.

cthia wrote:8. Well do we at least have a good location we can use as a staging area?

— "We don't know for sure. We can wing it by stooging outside their hyper limit."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That one we can say for sure is the wrong answer. There are any number of empty systems nearby, within a few days' travel, that could be used as a staging point. They will know the astrography much better than we can.

There goes another assumption. You can't ever know for sure that any heretofore unknown systems are ever empty. Your entire contingent could have just hypered into a system literally crawling with Spiders out wargaming.

cthia wrote:"We can't see what we're supposed to be surrounding? And we won't know whether WE are surrounded?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:You can't see a planet? We've been able to see planets in our sky since we've had eyes!

I agree you won't know if you're surrounded, but I counter by saying there's no way that the surrounding of a significantly-sized fleet can affect its movements. It can always get out. Sieges aren't done to mobile forces; they are done to fixed population and industrial centres.

Of course you can see the planet. So at least you'll know you're in an inhabited system. But to effect a siege you've got to surround the planet AND its defenses and supply lines. The things that are critical to your siege you cannot see.

BTW, when you surround prey. How do you know if you caught anything in the circle if the prey is invisible?

Anyone remember this as a kid ...

"Hey bro, I caught a fly in my hand. Honest ... look. Damn, where'd the bugger go?"

cthia wrote:No, it shouldn't be the first strategy. But against this foe, it may be the last. So, the plan is to surveil an invisible foe??? And the supposition is that such a highly paranoid population won't be using their stealth at home. That might be true, but banking on it doesn't seem responsible.

Why wouldn't the MA use their stealth 24/7 if they know they have unwanted flies hanging around? And why would you think the MA would not be aware that they have intruders? The plan is to watch invisible infrastructure. How do the watchers know that they are not being watched? If they are, they will be allowed to see only what the MA lets them see. IOW, now the plan is formulated upon misdirections, inaccuracies and ignorance.
[...]
There's that dangerous word again. Unlikely. If the MA knows their location has been compromised, and/or if they know they are being watched they will take certain precautions. When any major system is under a DEFCON then certain precautions will be taken.

Let's stipulate that the Darius system is aware it's being surveilled. It's very hard to hide a hyper footprint and, given that they themselves did it to Manticore, they'll have the best monitoring equipment they can produce. It won't be as good as Manticore's or whatever Manticore has installed in their allies' systems, but effective enough.

So, yes, they'd immediately go into stealth the moment a unscheduled ship was detected. But given the slowness of the speed of light, a translation 10 light-minutes outside the hyperlimit will give this ship about 20 minutes of data from before the translation was detected (the hyper footprint is FTL, but the planet is 10 minutes inside the hyperlimit; 10 + 10 = 20). It won't be good data because this ship is up to 20 light-minutes or 360 million km away from what it's observing, but it's some data.

The problem is maintaining around-the-clock stealth everywhere. You can't hide the planet and you can't hide the shipyards. So this scout knows exactly where it must focus its attention. It won't find the stealth ships on patrol and those sent to drive it away, but it will find the shipyards. And in those shipyards it will find the incomplete ships, the ships that have reactors taken offline, etc. that can't power their stealth up. Moreover, any moored ship is unlikely to be able to be stealthy either. The tugs and shuttles carrying supplies aren't stealthy, so if you follow them, you can see when they drop off cargo and personnel to a ship you hadn't found before.

The issue of "around-the-clock" is also a problem. You're putting a lot of strain on the clocks of everything. When do you relax your posture? If you don't confirm the scout was captured or destroyed, you can't know if it's left. So is Darius going to permanently maintain stealth procedures for 10 years? The GA would do what you proposed: keep popping in and out, just to force the Darius defenders to keep their readiness status high. Moreover, this forces the Darius defenders to stay at home, instead of sending expeditionary forces to wreak havoc elsewhere.

I don't think there are going to be any freighters whatsoever entering this classified system. I think the MA will have true colliers built upon the spider drive. You talk about a mass and power penalty to operate the spider. In a war, it won't matter. Also, I question whether the GA will be able to get close enough to see supply lines. When hypering into a system their Home Fleet is invisible until they light off their drives. Regardless, I hardly think any ship to ship transfers are visible. Besides, there is a thing called contingency plans, and during war everything changes. Supply lines are moved and closely protected.

Besides, a siege is not a plan to adopt against an entirely self sufficient system. Sure, you may be able to starve them out in a couple of years. If you can at least see your targets. Heck, our government AND our allies couldn't effectively blockade North Korea. NK kept getting supplies from somewhere. A siege is simply a no go.

Military colliers, sure. But a system's economy is not built on the military, but on civilian shipping.

That said, you're right that this system is likely to be self-sufficient and have minimal traffic elsewhere. There will be no supply lines to be observed. In fact, all the traffic is likely to be with stealth ships of some sort: streak-drive courier boats. So I will agree there'll be little traffic to be observed.

But the GA will need to know that before they mount an operation. They need to know if there isn't a second or third system that Darius is trading heavily with and would be able to quickly respond.

As for NK, the problem is that it isn't a siege or blockade if the backdoor (or backyard for that matter) is left open. NK has a land border with the PRC and that has never been closed. And China (and the Soviet Union before that) has all the incentive to help NK.

What surveillance ship? You think the GA is going to be able to get a ship close enough to surveil a Spider? You do know that any common variety of Spider has Spider senses that tingle?

But really, you think a wedge powered surveillance ship can slink that far into the system??? No. Drones? No. You think any spider driven ship will be visible at range simply because it drops its stealth? At that point it will be no different than a wedge powered ship with the wedge down. Invisible.

A ship, unlikely. A Ghost Rider, quite possible.

The scenario is that the scout ship has dropped into the system and located the shipyards. There, it can see ships being resupplied or constructed. So it can see with no shadow of doubt the spider ships. It has moved the Ghost Riders to within 1 light-second of the planet, a distance we know Ghost Riders can remain reasonably stealthy.

The Ghost Rider still has a lock on the ship when it gets underway and activates its stealth. So it can follow. I wouldn't make a single GR follow, but instead have a chain of them along the projected course, so they hand off to one another over a period of time. That way, it's not a single asset that the stealth ship must be scanning for.

There's though a big difference between following a big-a$$ monitor-size ship and a courier boat. As agreed above, there'll be little to no traffic outside the system. The LDs won't be going anywhere for the first few years, only a handful of boats that the Alignment us using to keep tabs on its agents. Those will be very hard to follow.

See above. That's not true. Even GA ships are not visible when their wedges are down. And these ships have no wedges.

The context was ships inside the shipyard. Since the shipyard itself is not stealthy, you know where it is and can see what's in the slips. And no stealth is going to work when you're focusing the Ghost Riders' eyes in a 100-km section.

We also know that LDs have active stealth. The keyword there is active: that means it's drawing power and doing something. In turn, that means that a ship that is laid up for refit, repairs or still in construction won't have the thing running. Moreover, I'd venture that active stealth doesn't work against the backdrop of a planet or shipyard anyway. It works against the black of space and other backdrops with little variation.

No Ditto applies here either. Besides, the strength of Home Fleet is generally known. Before the alliance, the SK and Haven were aware of the approximate size of each other's Home Fleet. It could even be determined when Home Fleet was being drawn down to cover weaknesses.

Agreed: you generally have a lot more information because of historical references and work up what they can have. In electrical engineering, a professor once said "god created all capacitors discharged," meaning that whenever we performed an integration from minus infinity, we were right to assume an initial zero condition. That's true of the Darius system too, but the problem is that you can't integrate from minus infinity.

So, yes, the problem here is much harder. You don't have those historical references and you don't have a history of inserted spies. Manticore knew it was going to have to face Haven, so it paid close attention to the construction. Haven tried to make it difficult by having randomised and reused ship hull numbers, but Manticore still had a good idea of the strength of the PN. That's not going to be the case here.

But on the other hand, we know this system has hardly been trading with anyone else. If the scout ships reports it's self-sufficient with no outside traffic, it's also a good bet that it's not building ships elsewhere. There would be a constant and visible traffic of parts and personnel. (note: we need to move to a spoilers thread for more on this)

So what I said about estimating what this system should have based on the industry that can be seen is a good indication. How good, I don't know. It might be too iffy to make military decisions on. But if your back is against the wall, something is better than nothing.

Now you're coming close to reality. The GA will have to force a confrontation. That is one way to gain intel. You can go back home and let them examine the missile they remove out of your orifice later. Then come back for round 2.

And "that is one way" means there may be others.

There goes another assumption. You can't ever know for sure that any heretofore unknown systems are ever empty. Your entire contingent could have just hypered into a system literally crawling with Spiders out wargaming.

Ah, I see your point. You can't know that any system you don't see anything in is really empty. There could be stealth or simply otherwise undetected assets already there. A 100-year-old destroyer with minimal wedge on the other side of the system is not going to be seen.

The problem there is that those pickets need to be rotated. Even just scanner buoys need to have their data downloaded periodically. That means traffic in and out of Darius and hyper footprints are visible.

Then there's the issue that stars are actually quite common. At 0.14 stars per cubic parsec, a sphere with radius of a mere 5pc has 70+ stars. Double that radius, and you have 8x more stars. In the Theta band, the effective warship speed of 3000c is within 1% of 2.5pc/day. So we're talking about 70+ stars within 3 days' travel and 580+ within 5 days.

Of course you can see the planet. So at least you'll know you're in an inhabited system. But to effect a siege you've got to surround the planet AND its defenses and supply lines. The things that are critical to your siege you cannot see.

Right, and you can surround the planet and external supply lines. We discussed having supply lines to other systems and those won't exist for Darius.

But intra-system will. The space industry is going to be based off any asteroid belts that the system has. Those can be interdicted. So Darius will work off its stockpile (which will probably be gone in a couple of weeks) and might need to start mining the planet itself.

Unless they moved asteroids into close orbit. We haven't heard of that in the HV, but we know it's physically possible.

BTW, when you surround prey. How do you know if you caught anything in the circle if the prey is invisible?

You don't know for sure. But what's the defenders' alternative? Leave the planet unprotected? They'll be somewhere close to the planet to react to an attack.

The signature of an occupied planet could be pretty low.

We know that ship-borne detectors can only see hyper transitions at several light hours, so you are not going to be detecting wedges at interstellar distances. You are going to have to be deep inside the system, likely well under a light-hour from the vessel.

high powered or omni radio transmissions can be banned, using optical links with low-power radios. Radar is not typically very useful in the honorverse, so you won't have that. People don't produce so much power that you are going to see a significant thermal signature detectable at interstellar distances.

So you can make it so that you have to get pretty close or spend a lot of time.

If you are searching tend of thousands of systems and that they have an effective set of detectors you can pretty much assume that if you find the right spot they will know you are there. You probably won't be dropping out of hyper 6 light-months out from each system and spending the next year investigating it. You'll drop out at or somewhat beyond the hyperlimit.

So the question for the defender is:
1) What is the time it takes a visitor at 20-30LM to gather info that shows this is an occupied industrialized system. Can you increase this?
2) Can you be confident that you can deal with them inside that interval without giving them both cause to flee and the time needed. If not, can you increase system stealth to do that or increase the deployed forces?
3) Do you keep adequate assets in hyper to chase down and deal with a RMN cruiser hypering out unexpectedly?

If you can't stop them from dropping in, figuring out who is here and then going back to report then you are probably going to have a problem in the next decade or two.

kzt wrote:The signature of an occupied planet could be pretty low.

We know that ship-borne detectors can only see hyper transitions at several light hours, so you are not going to be detecting wedges at interstellar distances. You are going to have to be deep inside the system, likely well under a light-hour from the vessel.

Indeed, but from half a light hour away from the primary, you can be reasonably safe from interception and still see all the wedges in the hyperlimit.

high powered or omni radio transmissions can be banned, using optical links with low-power radios. Radar is not typically very useful in the honorverse, so you won't have that. People don't produce so much power that you are going to see a significant thermal signature detectable at interstellar distances.

Maybe. A paranoid society like the Alignment may want to ban any medium- or high-power EM transmission not of their own, but I don't expect that to be the norm for other systems. So to find an inhabited system with ships and obvious industry, but little to no EM leakage will stand out like a sore thumb.

So you can make it so that you have to get pretty close or spend a lot of time.

If you are searching tend of thousands of systems and that they have an effective set of detectors you can pretty much assume that if you find the right spot they will know you are there. You probably won't be dropping out of hyper 6 light-months out from each system and spending the next year investigating it. You'll drop out at or somewhat beyond the hyperlimit.

Quite agreed. We haven't discussed how Darius is found, we've started the discussion on "assuming it's found, how do you attack it." We've gone slightly back to "how do you recon it," but the assumption that "there's something in this particular system" is still there.

So the question for the defender is:
1) What is the time it takes a visitor at 20-30LM to gather info that shows this is an occupied industrialized system. Can you increase this?

I don't think you can hide that at all. You can curb EM emissions of information, but you can't hide the thermal signature of all the industries, you can't hide the wedges of all your spaceships (that aren't spiders), and you can't hide the night-time light pollution of your planet.

You'd have to build everything underground, including your industry and material extraction. That is not what Darius is and that doesn't seem to be possible in the Honorverse anyway. Even then, since the objective is to have ships, you have to lift stuff to orbit. It only takes arriving at the wrong time to see that happening.

2) Can you be confident that you can deal with them inside that interval without giving them both cause to flee and the time needed. If not, can you increase system stealth to do that or increase the deployed forces?

30 light-minutes from the primary, on the ecliptic is a circumference 60*pi light-minutes. To intercept someone before they leave, you need to reach them in 3 minutes or less, which is an MDM's full three stages in "turbo" mode, covering 0.81 light-minutes in radius. So you'd have to pre-place a pod every 1.6 light-minutes in that circumference, for a total of 231 locations. But you need to cover the 10 light-minutes from the hyper limit to that circumference, which has an inner circumference of 40*pi light-minutes, so you need 12.5 concentric rings, for an average of 192 locations per ring. That's 2400 locations on the ecliptic.

Now you revolve this 180° to cover the entire sphere.

It's not impossible (it's at least within an order of magnitude of possible), but it's A LOT of maintenance. Which defeats the point, because anyone popping in further than the 31 light-minute-from-the-primary interception-within-3-minutes zone will see all the maintenance activity.

3) Do you keep adequate assets in hyper to chase down and deal with a RMN cruiser hypering out unexpectedly?

Is that possible? We've never heard of lurking on alpha to catch a ship translating up. Translations up appear to have almost no detectable emission. So a GA destroyer or cruiser that left real space stealthily should remain almost so in the alpha band. It could cycle through several bands making minimal movement before bringing the wedge up to full power. That would mean ships need to be in practically all bands waiting for a prey.

We have discussed the fact that this should be a great defence strategy. With a 62x multiplication factor, the engagement range should encompass the entire hyper limit and more. A 4-light-minute MDM could cover an effective 4-light-hour real-space range, for example, and a 3-light-second energy beam range could hit an unsuspecting target that translated within 3 light-minutes of your real-space location.

Plus, the detection range should also increase, despite a higher particle density. So even if that cruiser translated up to alpha and escaped detection on translation, if it brings up its wedge to full power it'll be detected. If it translates to beta, with a 767x multiplication effect, a ship that was sitting on the star's position would see anything within a light-hour n-space as if it were within 4.7 light-seconds or less than 1.5 million km.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Is that possible? We've never heard of lurking on alpha to catch a ship translating up. Translations up appear to have almost no detectable emission. So a GA destroyer or cruiser that left real space stealthily should remain almost so in the alpha band. It could cycle through several bands making minimal movement before bringing the wedge up to full power. That would mean ships need to be in practically all bands waiting for a prey.

When the Peeps left Seaford Nine for the attack on Hancock Station, there was a force just over the alpha wall when the two Manticoran CL that had been scouting the system hyped out to report that the Peeps were on the move. They had the advantage of knowing when and where the Manties would be leaving to set up their ambush.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Is that possible? We've never heard of lurking on alpha to catch a ship translating up. Translations up appear to have almost no detectable emission.

Upward translations produce very significant emissions, but they are on the other side of the wall. So when you sneakily cross the alpha wall upward it is basically undetectable in real space, but on the alpha side there is this huge unmistakable flare. If you have a policy that says everyone only leaves at this point or at X time and they don't, well that's is kind of suspicious.

And people have followed warships through hyper before.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Is that possible? We've never heard of lurking on alpha to catch a ship translating up. Translations up appear to have almost no detectable emission. So a GA destroyer or cruiser that left real space stealthily should remain almost so in the alpha band.

It's my understanding that a ship's arrival on the far side of any hyper wall is pretty noticeable (Like kzt said). It's the ship's departure that's got almost no detectable emission.

Depending on the hyper band you've got up to 92% velocity loss and that energy seems to go get dumped into the applicable hyper wall and thus create the grav signal of your arrival. So transition out of normal space and yeah, that won't be seen by folks still back there; but your energy bleed arriving in the Alpha band should cause a nice bright grav signal. Conversely when leaving the Alpha bands there should be virtually no signal there; but we know there's an arrival signal at least in normal space.


That signal upon arrival should also be true for any transition between the hyper bands. Crack the Delta wall, going up or down, and you should have an arrival signal in the Epsilon (going up) or Gamma bands (going down) respectively. (Though since the velocity loss isn't so high it should be a weaker signal, for a given velocity, than when you crack the Alpha wall)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We have discussed the fact that this should be a great defence strategy. With a 62x multiplication factor, the engagement range should encompass the entire hyper limit and more. A 4-light-minute MDM could cover an effective 4-light-hour real-space range, for example, and a 3-light-second energy beam range could hit an unsuspecting target that translated within 3 light-minutes of your real-space location.

Also, its my understanding that FTL is 62x faster (in normal space) because those grav signals move along the hyper wall at the speed of light of that next higher hyper band. Alpha is 62x faster than normal space; thus giving you that 62x advantage.

However, Beta is only 12.37x faster than Alpha (767x normal space). So if FTL in the Alpha bands move at the speed of light of Beta you'd only get a relative 12.37x multiplication factor. That's way less of an Apollo advantage; plus your grav sensors would be similarly slowed.

And it only gets worse as you climb; Gamma is only 1.92x better than Beta; so if FTL is speed of light in Gamma then by this point your FTL sensors and fire control are less than twice as good as lightspeed sensors/links.

And the noise floor apparently rises with the bands, so your detection range drops and the details fuzzed out more as you rise from alpha towards whatever is the current limit. Each one is worse than the one below it.

kzt wrote:And the noise floor apparently rises with the bands, so your detection range drops and the details fuzzed out more as you rise from alpha towards whatever is the current limit. Each one is worse than the one below it.

Though the relative velocity multiplier actually bottoms out at Theta and marginally improves again for Iota.
So your FTL signals will be 3% faster when cruising in the Theta bands (using the Iota speed of light) than when cruising in Eta and using the Theta speed of light.

Relative FTL speed within a given band
62.00x Normal-space
12.37x Alpha bands
01.92x Beta bands
01.48x Gamma bands
01.32x Delta bands
01.24x Epsilon bands
01.20x Zeta bands
01.16x Eta bands
01.20x Theta bands

But unless / until RFC either updates the speed by hyper band chart, or puts text into one of the new books, we won't know the velocity multiplier for the Kappa and Lambda bands.

Those are potentially relevant as it appears that the Streak Drive can let a ship climb into the Kappa bands; making the velocity multiplier of the Lambda relevant to FTL signal speed there.

(Plus it would be interesting to see if the curve has fully reversed, if 1.20x is a stable plateau, or even if the Iota bands were an anomalous bump in the graph and the relative advantage resumes shrinking)

kzt wrote:And the noise floor apparently rises with the bands, so your detection range drops and the details fuzzed out more as you rise from alpha towards whatever is the current limit. Each one is worse than the one below it.

Indeed, but at least for Alpha and Beta, the multiplier is probably significant enough that it outweighs the particle density.