Why did everyone become dumb at the end of TEIF?

phillies wrote:There is an interesting way to detect 'invisible' probes.

Take a beam weapon. Defocus it so that it illuminates a wide area rather than a point -- not that they are that good at focusing; a diffraction-limited gamma ray laser is a point beam over vast distances. The gamma rays (x-rays are better for this) induces x-ray fluorescence in the target including visible light. Not much, but photodetectors have high quantum efficiency.

Peekaboo--we see you.

Although after a physical target is hit by an energy beam in the Honorverse, it is generally obvious to everyone that such a beam has been used. Note that energy beams (aside from radar) are not used for scanning (at least I do not remember an example).

What would be of more interest is a way to track an energy beam back to its source. If space is at all filled with particles, such as solar wind within the hyperlimit, then there will be particle excitation along the path leading back to the weapon.

phillies wrote:There is an interesting way to detect 'invisible' probes.

Take a beam weapon. Defocus it so that it illuminates a wide area rather than a point -- not that they are that good at focusing; a diffraction-limited gamma ray laser is a point beam over vast distances. The gamma rays (x-rays are better for this) induces x-ray fluorescence in the target including visible light. Not much, but photodetectors have high quantum efficiency.

Peekaboo--we see you.

That is interesting. I posited in another thread that the energy beams could be defocused to destroy a lot of the RMN's clumped missiles. Since missiles are more prone to destruction than warships with sidewalls. I think it was argued that the missiles aren't that close together. But it seems that a defocused beam should cover a lot more area, and point defense should be even more effective.

phillies wrote:There is an interesting way to detect 'invisible' probes.

Take a beam weapon. Defocus it so that it illuminates a wide area rather than a point -- not that they are that good at focusing; a diffraction-limited gamma ray laser is a point beam over vast distances. The gamma rays (x-rays are better for this) induces x-ray fluorescence in the target including visible light. Not much, but photodetectors have high quantum efficiency.

Peekaboo--we see you.

cthia wrote:That is interesting. I posited in another thread that the energy beams could be defocused to destroy a lot of the RMN's clumped missiles. Since missiles are more prone to destruction than warships with sidewalls. I think it was argued that the missiles aren't that close together. But it seems that a defocused beam should cover a lot more area, and point defense should be even more effective.

An energy beam is destructive precisely because it is still focused at the distances where missiles need to be destroyed, which is greater than the range at which the laser warhead is triggered.

phillies wrote:There is an interesting way to detect 'invisible' probes.

Take a beam weapon. Defocus it so that it illuminates a wide area rather than a point -- not that they are that good at focusing; a diffraction-limited gamma ray laser is a point beam over vast distances. The gamma rays (x-rays are better for this) induces x-ray fluorescence in the target including visible light. Not much, but photodetectors have high quantum efficiency.

Peekaboo--we see you.

The problem there is range. The more you defocus, the more the energy dissipates per unit of distance.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The problem there is range. The more you defocus, the more the energy dissipates per unit of distance.

Yeah. Or more accurately, area.

You want to illuminate a spot with your 1x10^15W graser. Lets assume you need 1w per CM^2, or 10KW per meter, or 10GW per square KM. So you have enough power to light up a hundred thousand square KM, or a circle 250km across.

Cool!. So how far out do you need to spot these? Let's say 10 million KM. OK, the area of a sphere 10 million km is 4 pi r^2. Or 4 pi x 1x10^14, or about 1.25 * 10^15 square km. So you'll only need 1.25 *10^10 full power graser shots every, I don't know, 30 seconds?

Umm...

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The problem there is range. The more you defocus, the more the energy dissipates per unit of distance.

kzt wrote:Yeah. Or more accurately, area.

You want to illuminate a spot with your 1x10^15W graser. Lets assume you need 1w per CM^2, or 10KW per meter, or 10GW per square KM. So you have enough power to light up a hundred thousand square KM, or a circle 250km across.

Cool!. So how far out do you need to spot these? Let's say 10 million KM. OK, the area of a sphere 10 million km is 4 pi r^2. Or 4 pi x 1x10^14, or about 1.25 * 10^15 square km. So you'll only need 1.25 *10^10 full power graser shots every, I don't know, 30 seconds?

Umm...

Are you trying to put that much power (10KW) on every square meter of the surface of a sphere? Defocusing is not even going to cover a fraction of a hemisphere, unless you go crazy.

Better to think of having the beam in a cone, where the area of the circular base increases as the square of the distance from the point (since the radius varies linearly with a factor involving the angle of the cone). So if the power per square meter at one kilometer is 100,000KW, then the power per square meter at 100 kilometers is 10KW and at 1000 kilometers is 0.1KW.

Note: these are just figures to show the impact on the power density when the area increases as the square of the distance and not intended to be the actual power output of a graser.

The Ghosts were carried to a drop point by a hyper capable freighter. One reason would be to get them to the locations relatively close to the target system so they could go sneaking around gathering targeting information --and do it moving relatively slow-- to have the data ready for the
Sharks So, the Ghosts are spider drive ships but it is not clear if they were also hyper capable.

The Sharks were apparently hyper capable because they used that tractored together formation to mess with the eventual sensor readngs for that long range dropping into real space before the approach to Manticore (or Grayson but that attack was not described except from the end result).

The Sharks had to have been hybrid drive ships since they used the spider drive to move in on their weapons release points. If they had used impellers they would have shown up to the Manticore sensor systems. I didn't go back and look but the there is some question of how much communication the Ghosts had with the Sharks. 1st would be a one-way send of projected targeting information for stations, yards, fabrication sites, etc which would have had to have been gathered so the Sharks would know what the ballistic paths would need to be for the missile pods they were going to use and for the G-torps. As the G-torps could accelerate in on their own, they might have been launched earlier than the pods, particularly as they seem to end up more or less loitering near their primary targets (the big stations).

The Ghosts needed the ride to get them to the systems so they didn't have to spend that long period the sharks did. The Sharks were specially mentioned as "test beds" for the LD....at leasts for the weapons but probably also for the hybrid drive systems (two main systems though one power source). That does NOT include pure reaction drives such as we have seen in places like Honor at Cerebus to not show impeller activity to attack the Peep fleet.

if all three- Ghost, Shark and LD classes are hybrid drives they they are going to be hammerhead shapes with that three keg configuration. And we don't know what the limitations are on how far the skews can be out from the hulls since there is a lot of unknown physics involved. Certainly look really on on a scan or visual. And if any of the Alignment Navy spider drive ships had to use a hyperdrive in a combat situation they are going to light up like a magnesium flare. Since they (so far) don't have anything like the RMN/GSN compensators, they will be almost slugs at trying to get out of harms way.
Back to ambush hunters and snipers with ultra silenced weapons.

Brigade XO wrote:The Ghosts were carried to a drop point by a hyper capable freighter. One reason would be to get them to the locations relatively close to the target system so they could go sneaking around gathering targeting information --and do it moving relatively slow-- to have the data ready for the
Sharks So, the Ghosts are spider drive ships but it is not clear if they were also hyper capable.

The Sharks were apparently hyper capable because they used that tractored together formation to mess with the eventual sensor readngs for that long range dropping into real space before the approach to Manticore (or Grayson but that attack was not described except from the end result).

The Sharks had to have been hybrid drive ships since they used the spider drive to move in on their weapons release points. If they had used impellers they would have shown up to the Manticore sensor systems. I didn't go back and look but the there is some question of how much communication the Ghosts had with the Sharks. 1st would be a one-way send of projected targeting information for stations, yards, fabrication sites, etc which would have had to have been gathered so the Sharks would know what the ballistic paths would need to be for the missile pods they were going to use and for the G-torps. As the G-torps could accelerate in on their own, they might have been launched earlier than the pods, particularly as they seem to end up more or less loitering near their primary targets (the big stations).

The Ghosts needed the ride to get them to the systems so they didn't have to spend that long period the sharks did. The Sharks were specially mentioned as "test beds" for the LD....at leasts for the weapons but probably also for the hybrid drive systems (two main systems though one power source). That does NOT include pure reaction drives such as we have seen in places like Honor at Cerebus to not show impeller activity to attack the Peep fleet.

if all three- Ghost, Shark and LD classes are hybrid drives they they are going to be hammerhead shapes with that three keg configuration. And we don't know what the limitations are on how far the skews can be out from the hulls since there is a lot of unknown physics involved. Certainly look really on on a scan or visual. And if any of the Alignment Navy spider drive ships had to use a hyperdrive in a combat situation they are going to light up like a magnesium flare. Since they (so far) don't have anything like the RMN/GSN compensators, they will be almost slugs at trying to get out of harms way.
Back to ambush hunters and snipers with ultra silenced weapons.

I believe that we were only saying there was a hybrid drive if the ship had both wedge drive and spider drive; sails and spider drive did not count as hybrid, since they are used in different spaces. Note that the geometric requirement is that the sails be at the very front and back; the hammerhead shape is a military result of the wedge drive only.

Using hyperdrive to leave normal space does not cause a flare in normal space; flares only occur in the space that is being entered (so in the Alpha band when leaving normal).

Text has been presented that shows the Ghosts were the first ones to test the maneuver that the Sharks used to fool the hyper detection grid at Manticore; therefore the Ghosts have to be hyper capable and being transported in a ship was out of convenience, not necessity (That is the same mistake I made and the text was presented to prove me wrong).

Ghosts have to be u-boat level of crew comfort, as they are so jammed full of equipment.

tlb wrote:Text has been presented that shows the Ghosts were the first ones to test the maneuver that the Sharks used to fool the hyper detection grid at Manticore; therefore the Ghosts have to be hyper capable and being transported in a ship was out of convenience, not necessity (That is the same mistake I made and the text was presented to prove me wrong).

The other thing is that they had to leave after they completed their task. If they weren't hypercapable, they'd need to go somewhere that a freighter could jump in and collect them. That's risky in the aftermath of Oyster Bay, because the RMN and GSN would be pouncing on every single hyperspace contact.

To be picked up, the RV point would need to be at least 62 light-hours out from the target systems, which is one hour for the FTL signal to arrive at the receivers. One hour is a tight solution for the freighter dropping for hyperspace, the Ghosts being loaded up, and then the freighter hypering out. The loading on the freighter is unlikely to be an easy task. I'd be surprised if it could be done in half an hour. It's also possible (though by no means a given) that the hypergenerators need to be offline while loading, like the wedges must. If that's the case, powering up the hyper generators for a freighter that big is going to be in the order of 30 minutes too.

62 light-hours is 61.5 light-hours more than the hyperlimit. If the attack happened at 0.3c, depending on the geometry, those ships could have left the target system in as little as 40 minutes if they could hyper out. In that time, a wedge ship pulling 700 gravities could only get up to 0.05c, so it could never catch up, even if a track could be determined.

Could a ship give pursuit? In theory, yes. For the first 4.6 hours, the Shark is moving faster than the pursuer, but then the distance starts to close. It goes down to zero after 9 hours. But it's unlikely to happen because of the stealth: so long as the Shark's stealth wasn't compromised, it'll move out of any effective sensing range and then can just change course. If the stealth was damaged, the Shark would simply blow itself up to prevent capture.