Why did everyone become dumb at the end of TEIF?

TEIF 598 "We're going to assume that the alignment's sensor technology at least equal to our own, and we could pick up a hyper footprint within about two and a half light-weeks of Manticore....They will come out of hyper three light-weeks from their destination and carry out a detailed visual and passive sensor observation."

Oh, really? Let's see how that worked in SFTS.

SFTS "In the case of a star system like Manticore, those arrays could be literally thousands of kilometers across, with an exquisite sensitivity capable of picking up things like hyper-footprints and often even impeller signatures light-months out from the system primary, vastly beyond the range possible for any shipboard sensor."

SFTS ""Translation completed, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Vivienne Henning, his staff astrogator, announced. "Preliminary checks indicate we're right on the money: one light-month out on almost exactly the right bearing."
"Good work," Topolev complemented her, and she smiled with pleasure at the sincerity in his voice. He smiled back, then cleared his throat. "And now that we're here, let's go someplace else."
"Yes, Sir."
The twenty Shark-class ships, each about midway between an old-fashioned battleship and a dreadnought for size, deactivated the tractors which had held them together. Reaction thrusters flared, pushing them apart, although they didn't seek the same amount of separation most starships their size would have. Then again, they didn't need that much separation."

SFTS "Whoever it was had popped out of hyper a full light-month short of his intended destination, and then promptly (and sensibly) popped right back into hyper rather than spending the endless weeks which would have been required to reach anyplace worthwhile under impeller drive. And when she did arrive in the star system, or at the Junction, she wasn't going to tell a single solitary soul about her little misadventure. That kind of astrogation error went beyond simply embarrassing to downright humiliating."


Not to mention that at .4C it takes 2.5 weeks per light week, so 6 light weeks will take 15 weeks, which is not three months even if you ignore the several weeks of transit time.

kzt wrote:TEIF 598 "We're going to assume that the alignment's sensor technology at least equal to our own, and we could pick up a hyper footprint within about two and a half light-weeks of Manticore....They will come out of hyper three light-weeks from their destination and carry out a detailed visual and passive sensor observation."

Oh, really? Let's see how that worked in SFTS.

That's an author mistake. Replace "weeks" with "months" and it works out, aside from the calendar dates that are the chapter names.

Not to mention that at .4C it takes 2.5 weeks per light week, so 6 light weeks will take 15 weeks, which is not three months even if you ignore the several weeks of transit time.

.4c was only for the closest pass and that's for the Ghost Riders.

But I wouldn't do it like it was described in the text. The way it was described, they translated in 3 light-weeks/months out, accelerated to 0.8c, launched the recon drones, then translated out. Then they translated back in on the other side, at the same distance. That's a 6 light-week/month journey for the recon platforms, ignoring the time they spent at 0.4c in the inner system the curving arc they used to remain at a reasonable distance as negligible. So that's 6/.8 = 7.5 weeks/months to recover the drones and get results to the planners.

Instead, what they should've done is simply send the ships near the system. Two days out from it, they're still coasting, so launch the drones, which are stealthy on their own, and have them decelerate from 0.8 to 0.4c. Meanwhile, the ships curve around the system, never getting closer than 2 light-days. Once on the other side, they begin decelerating, since they have to get down to 0.3c anyway to translate out. The drones can catch up with them at the RV point, be recovered, and then the squadron can hyper out. So instead of 52.5 / 224.5 days, they could perform this in 30 / 120 days.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Instead, what they should've done is simply send the ships near the system. Two days out from it, they're still coasting, so launch the drones, which are stealthy on their own, and have them decelerate from 0.8 to 0.4c. Meanwhile, the ships curve around the system, never getting closer than 2 light-days. Once on the other side, they begin decelerating, since they have to get down to 0.3c anyway to translate out. The drones can catch up with them at the RV point, be recovered, and then the squadron can hyper out. So instead of 52.5 / 224.5 days, they could perform this in 30 / 120 days.

Probably not a good plan.
"In the case of a star system like Manticore, those arrays could be literally thousands of kilometers across, with an exquisite sensitivity capable of picking up things like hyper-footprints and often even impeller signatures light-months out from the system primary, vastly beyond the range possible for any shipboard sensor."

kzt wrote:Probably not a good plan.
"In the case of a star system like Manticore, those arrays could be literally thousands of kilometers across, with an exquisite sensitivity capable of picking up things like hyper-footprints and often even impeller signatures light-months out from the system primary, vastly beyond the range possible for any shipboard sensor."

Oops, I stand corrected. Thanks.

I'd be loathe to take a page from the Battle of Cerberus, but the ships may have enough delta-v in their reaction thrusters to make the arc and slow down from 0.8c to 0.3c. Or at least the arc and slow down some, until they're far enough that using the impellers in very low power setting might work, if they want to risk it.

But if they don't want to risk any impellers, then as you said the GRs would need to have travelled the full length at 0.4c...

kzt wrote:Probably not a good plan.
"In the case of a star system like Manticore, those arrays could be literally thousands of kilometers across, with an exquisite sensitivity capable of picking up things like hyper-footprints and often even impeller signatures light-months out from the system primary, vastly beyond the range possible for any shipboard sensor."

Note however that those massive arrays get mighty myopic once you get close to the star system itself; so sensitive that they're blinded by the noise of the system and system traffic. (Though David hasn't told us exactly how close in they can see -- though it seems to be significantly beyond the hyper limit and might even be largely blind within a few lighthours of the star).

So systems need additional shells of shorter ranged sensor platforms if they want to track ship movements closer in. (And that "noise" is presumably what makes it possible for ships to use low power wedges under stealth without being tracked as long as they stay far enough from those shorter ranged sensors.



So it might be possible to hyper in from beyond the range of the long range sensors, builds up a vector towards the system coast in and then use stealthed wedges to adjust your vector once you're too close for the very long range array to see you. As long as you're willing to commit to the multi-month flyby mission.

Jonathan_S wrote:Note however that those massive arrays get mighty myopic once you get close to the star system itself; so sensitive that they're blinded by the noise of the system and system traffic. (Though David hasn't told us exactly how close in they can see -- though it seems to be significantly beyond the hyper limit and might even be largely blind within a few lighthours of the star).

So systems need additional shells of shorter ranged sensor platforms if they want to track ship movements closer in. (And that "noise" is presumably what makes it possible for ships to use low power wedges under stealth without being tracked as long as they stay far enough from those shorter ranged sensors.

That's interesting and also far more complex than I'd imagined. It's plausible, though.

The simplest solution I'd envisaged was a proportional increase in capability as distance decreased. Whether that's linear, quadratic, cubic, exponential, polynomial or whatever, is not relevant. But it would mean that the capability of those arrays to detect anything would be much, much higher at a light-day than at a a light-month.

We know from a lot of textev that any decent system's wedge-detection capability is in the light-hour range. When Crandall dropped on Spindle uninvited, she expected her footprint and impeller wedges to be detected, but did not expect her light-speed detection to be for a long time. In many cases, we saw this: that a system's defenders could see there were ships out there and a general outline of the power of those wedges (so they knew a destroyer from a superdreadnought) but had to wait for those light-speed scans to get details on.

So what I thought was that there either there were two different arrays, like Jonathan is suggesting, or that the ability of the one array didn't extend to wedges until within a few light-hours. That is to say, their long-range (light-months) capability was restricted to only the massive spikes, such as the hyper translation footprints. Not wedges themselves.

An example was the GNS Francis Mueller getting lost inside the Yeltsin's Star system near Uriel because their navigators failed to account for the gravitational influence of that massive gas giant. The GSN did lose track of where that ship was, despite whatever arrays they have had in their own system. We don't know exactly when this occurred, but it was early in the First Havenite War, so the capabilities of the Yeltsin system would have been very lacking. Though I expect that, due to how the war started, with the scouting by Peep forces and the fact that Yeltsin had had two major battles in that war already (plus the two before the war), installing grav-detection arrays would have been one of the first orders of business.

Also note how the Peeps did scout Manticore Alliance systems prior to the outbreak of the war, using Solarian technology of all things. The PN destroyers made soft transitions into the systems very close to the hyper limit, and used their wedges to move around.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Also note how the Peeps did scout Manticore Alliance systems prior to the outbreak of the war, using Solarian technology of all things. The PN destroyers made soft transitions into the systems very close to the hyper limit, and used their wedges to move around.

Note however they were primarily scouting the frontier systems - which wouldn’t have the massive (IIRC multi km sized) and expensive long range sensor arrays that the major system have.
Also they didn’t scout Grayson (which did not yet have such arrays) because of the very high in-system traffic and amount of asteroid mining (too great a chance the stealth recon platforms would be stumbled upon). But they weren’t scouting the Manticore binary system because the attempt to slip in and out would have been detected by its sensor arrays.

Jonathan_S wrote:Note however they were primarily scouting the frontier systems - which wouldn’t have the massive (IIRC multi km sized) and expensive long range sensor arrays that the major system have.

Someone from Bu9 once explained to me what these are. They are vast, on the order of hundreds or thousands of KM in size. And they are made up of a huge number of small sensor nodes arranged in a 3d array. So there is a lot more empty than sensors in the space occupied by the array. The very slight differences between what the sensor nodes detect is processed and is what gives them their sensitivity.

It also means the sensors are not easily destroyed unless you send a vessel into energy range to shoot them up for a while.

OK, onto dumb thing number two, and three.

2: Why is the RMN not honoring the threat of the spider drive? They did this during the final battle here, and at Beowulf in the last book.
3: How is the MA going to convince the GA that this is 'the MA' planet when there is no spider drive?

I can see two possibilities for issue number 2:

A) Everyone is remarkably dumb as to the actual possibilities this offers a foe.

B) Despite the devastation of Manticore by the MAN and summarized in Chapter 30 of MoH as "We believe the attack was made possible through the development of a radically new starship drive technology" nobody really believes this. Which is why the proceeded to camp out in a way that is remarkably vulnerable to spider attack.

For issue number 3 there are two obvious possibilities:
A) The MA is convinced that everyone is remarkably dumb.

B) They already know, through their sources, that the GA is not really convinced that something like the spider drive really exists and therefore if they keep it hidden the GA will come up with excuses for how someone didn't just turn all of what they know about space travel upside down.

My personal suspicion that 2B and 3B are correct, as they self-correlate.

And I think this would be good if that was the case. I mean, they are totally wrong, but it would be nice to see the amazingly flawless RMN and HH totally screw it up by the numbers.

You compared Scotty's recon run with Oyster Bay's infiltration, right?

Apples and oranges.

Scotty is using a conventional drive and they know how far their best sensors can see a transition to normal space using it- so they took that distance, rounded up to the nearest light week and minimized the footprint by coming out of hyper nice and slow.

The Sharks are using the spider drive and it doesn't look like a normal transition.

Even then, it did register as an anomaly and a tin can squadron was sent out to check it, remember? The problem was that they didn't know what to look for and the Sharks' stealth was adequate to conceal them.