Why did everyone become dumb at the end of TEIF?

Actually, the sharks translated out of hyperspace the same way everyone else does. They did it at one light month, and they were detected when they did so. Scotty's ships translated at three light weeks and somehow that was considered a safe distance, contrary to previous evidence.

jtg452 wrote: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.

Except they were still inside the detection radius that Manticore picked up the Sharks. Fat, Dumb and Happy.

Jonathan_S wrote: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.

Yup. Anybody's security can be defeated by a sufficiently long coast phase. Thus having a huge detection range is of only limited benefit. In times of war it's useful in making a coast-in attack more time expensive, but against something like Oyster Bay hyper detection isn't a defense.

jaydub69 wrote:Actually, the sharks translated out of hyperspace the same way everyone else does. They did it at one light month, and they were detected when they did so. Scotty's ships translated at three light weeks and somehow that was considered a safe distance, contrary to previous evidence.

Manticore apparently has far above normal detection range.

kzt wrote:

jtg452 wrote: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.

Except they were still inside the detection radius that Manticore picked up the Sharks. Fat, Dumb and Happy.

Tremaine's 3 ships had less total mass than 1 Shark and 20 Sharks came out of hyper slowly in an attempt to look like a false positive signal. Perhaps the difference in mass had an affect, perhaps not.

jtg452 wrote:The Sharks are using the spider drive and it doesn't look like a normal transition.

Actually, from all we know, they do. The hyperspace engines aboard spider ships are still the same as for everyone else. Even if subtly changed or improved, we know from textev that they produce a footprint that can't be hidden. And the Sharks transitioned with four attached together, so that was an even larger than normal footprint.

What's more, though the Sharks flew themselves, the Ghosts and the pods for missiles and torpedoes were flown aboard a freighter, which did have normal engines.

So if anything, the Oyster Bay transition was a much brighter event than Scotty's.

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.

That's not the problem. The problem is that the transition was detected at a light-month out. So why did Honor tell Scotty to transition three fourths of a light-month out?

kzt wrote: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.

Let me add two C options.

Starting with the third question, which we've already discussed. The decision to hold back the spider drive was made in spite of that eventually revealing the fact that Galton was not, after all, the final hideout. In the short-term, it doesn't matter because Darius isn't found yet and, if it had been, there would be little they could do anyway. In the long-term, it doesn't matter either way again, because all the circumstances might change again (the secret leaking, an advance in sensors making the technology obsolete, an advance in impeller stealth doing so too, a new technology may come to improve on it, etc.).

So all that matters is the medium term: the time starting when they can defend themselves and ending when sufficient time has elapsed that even if the secret had been revealed, it wouldn't change things. So I bet they reasoned that they shouldn't reveal this card because it provided them with a sooner starting moment of when they could defend themselves and put the Plan to action, even if it also makes the GA keep searching for them all along.


As for why Honor kept everyone bunched up, here's an idea I've just had. The issue isn't that Honor transited in a tight formation -- that's good defence against an unprepared unknown. The issue was that she kept it that way in spite of spiders potentially being present. So... what if like your 2B she knew they weren't present, but not for the reasons you stated?

So, what if Scotty, before he left, sent back the Ghost Riders and had them take up position well outside the hyper limit of Galton but well inside their sensing technology? Then when Honor came back, she could query those GRs and know all the ships that had been there, with spider or not. I've said before that with sufficient data, you could locate the spiders because of supply, maintenance, crew transfers, etc. This would have been months of data, showing there was not a single transfer to a ship with unprecedented stealth capabilities. If any of the ships they did see suddenly disappeared from sensors during battle, it would be a huge tell too.

So they rule out Galton as being the source of the spiders. And since they only stayed for a week, an attack from outside the system would not be possible because they would have seen a footprint if someone had transited less than 6 light-days away (maybe a hyperspace picket could come in handy). But in this case, then Honor did have a clock with a deadline to wrap up the operations and disperse the GF in the system to present fewer tempting targets. Anyway, that leaves unaddressed the risk that the enemy has, since OB, developed a stealth hyperspace transition system.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Starting with the third question, which we've already discussed. The decision to hold back the spider drive was made in spite of that eventually revealing the fact that Galton was not, after all, the final hideout. In the short-term, it doesn't matter because Darius isn't found yet and, if it had been, there would be little they could do anyway. In the long-term, it doesn't matter either way again, because all the circumstances might change again (the secret leaking, an advance in sensors making the technology obsolete, an advance in impeller stealth doing so too, a new technology may come to improve on it, etc.).

So all that matters is the medium term: the time starting when they can defend themselves and ending when sufficient time has elapsed that even if the secret had been revealed, it wouldn't change things. So I bet they reasoned that they shouldn't reveal this card because it provided them with a sooner starting moment of when they could defend themselves and put the Plan to action, even if it also makes the GA keep searching for them all along.

Let me add to this: revealing the spider might have been [i]more[i] risky.

First, they may have reasoned that the GA had a good chance of not calling off the hunt no matter what, so keeping an arrow in their quiver is simply good practice. The operations to dismantle Jessyk and Manpower will take years because of the decentralised nature of those. While we know the Onion is a set of paranoid self-delusional hyper-rational clones, the GA doesn't know that. A cell structure for a guerilla makes sense, so they have to honour that possibility. Moreover, there are loose agents in the field, caches of weapons, intel, and funds, which must be retrieved lest some adventurous type turn warlord.

If the GA did get its hands on the spider, there's no telling what they can uncover from it. They could figure out an improved version that is even more deadly than what the MAN is fielding. They could figure out a sensing technology that negates the stealth. So the GA having access to the spider is, from the purely military perspective, a lose-lose proposition.

Second, as I said before in another thread, inserting the knowledge into the Galton databases was simply not possible. It would be evident from forensic scans that it was inserted. It would need to be paired with shipyards and construction machinery, prototypes and parts, and also skilled personnel who knew how to use it. None of that can be inserted in the time they had, without the Galton population (which would become prisoners) knowing they had been tampered with and left off to die on the vine. Plus, there's a non-zero chance that this information leads somehow to Darius, especially if it has to be done quickly.

So, yes, revealing the spider was simply more risk than not doing so and confirming that there is a second hidey-hole.


That only leaves a meta-question: why did RFC insert Galton? We're back where we were one book ago.

If part of the ploy of creating Galton was to offer up a scapegoat (not unusual for the Alignment) they still had to make it a realistic target. So it had to be a large operation and powerful- can't let a significant spaced based industrial manufacturing system just sit there with no defenses- and you need to make it look and feel right

So, here is this system where at least the one planet which can support human life appears to be something like genetic slave based food and other operations (like assembly line production of more saves) plus a (lets call it star-line enclave) restricted access ground area. All sorts of orbital manufacturing -and we presume mining and resource extraction with massive populations. Much appears to be heavily militarized for organization and control plus probably just as regimented for manufacture. Sort of like classic depictions of Soviet industry but not as forgiving (big smile), run by fanatics of the Alignment.
It builds all sorts of warships and many massive orbital forts, stations etc...........and not so much in trade of any kind with anywhere else in the explored galaxy. The Lair of the Evil Villains.....lots of uniforms, fight to the death (then suicide if not killed but certainly before you can be taken alive) and be really clear to not observe any recognized "Law of War".

It's a private military system with no customers for it's products but the Alighment and apparently NOBODY gets to leave it.

Yeah, that makes a nice clean end to where the Alignment crept off to when the abandoned Mesa and both killed all those people and blew the crap out of so many inhabited areas with nuclear weapons just to cover their tracks. Except........none of the signature G-Torp weapons, no undetectable starships causing ANY problems with the massive fleet Harrington too to Galton (come on guys, really, nobody even shot some poor Destroyer in the ass from a place nobody was detected or floated pods in ballistically to Harrington's formations from anywhere?)?

Having spent so much blood and equipment and effort to vanish from Mesa, especially of their own nominal "membership" and people, we have NO IDEA of ANY of the Houdini lift that was taken to Galton survived the destruction of the forts etc between actual fighting or the self immolation of the command structures habitats.

Now the propaganda organs will grind out the line that "YOU GOT THE ALL" except for some minor agents and you can stop spending millions of hours and hundreds of billions of credits looking for the tiny number that may survive....ect, etc, etc.

Ah....Self modified genetic super-race with delusions of Godhood which operated an entire planet for the production of genetic-slaves both as the local workforce and sale wherever they could get money for them......and you think they just might not have the capasity to do the same thing again given that they can literally grow human workers on an industrial scale to provide the workforce to do it again???

Sigh

It's pretty damn obvious that the RMN really doesn't believe in invisible spacecraft. Otherwise they would act like there was some sort of threat. And at both Beowulf and Galton they did not.

The fact that the gamma ray weapons were on spider torpedoes is something that absolutely nobody in the RMN knows or really suspects. They totally missed the hundreds of pods full of missiles, it hardly needed some ultra-sneaky invisible platform to reach firing range.

And the missiles that were being used by Galton had that same warhead. So the reason they have never seen the ultra sneaky spacecraft might be why we haven't seen the better documented Nazi flying saucers. They don't exist. And everyone they question and all of the data they have will confirm that.

It dos raise a whole lot of questions inside the MAN and associated orgs - Like what the hell were our leaders thinking when they deployed them and exposed them?

In addition to deciding to expose the Cataphract missiles when you'll be at SDM range in the OB attack. Uh, why?