Attacking Darius:

Loren Pechtel wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:As for what it would mean if Darius is forewarned, I can't tell. I should point out that Galton did not it was going to eventually be invaded, but I don't see that there was anything that they could have done to change the outcome, or even nudge it significantly.

I think the picture has fundamentally changed with Apollo. Now the attacker can stay beyond the hyper limit and blow up pretty much anything they want to.

n7axw wrote:I've been wondering why it was assumed that Darius would be less exposed than Galton. It seems to me more the luck of the draw. Some survey ship could have stumbled across Darius
just as Ruth managed to notice something odd out on that dwarf system that the Alliance decided to investigate. What makes Darius less likely to be found?

Don

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Recall that Galton was protected by doctoring the original survey to indicate an uninhabitable planet, that isn't uninhabitable.

It may be grasping at straws, but in another thread I went out on a limb and suggested that Darius actually could be an uninhabitable planet. To everyone except an entity with their affinity for fondling DNA. Let's just say I wouldn't be surprised.

cthia wrote:That is true. It is essentially what Hamish assured Beth when Beth enquired about the state of the war on two fronts? But as I recall, Hamish added a qualifier. Paraphrasing, "I assure you Elizabeth, we can handle anything the Mandarins send at us, until we run out of missiles." Am I mistaken about that?

Not really, but it's also incomplete because the number of ships the Mandarins could send was also finite. White Haven may be thinking (or knowing, because the RMN does have good intel) that the SLN would run out of ships before the RMN would run out of missiles.

In a race to build more, the Alliance would win. The Alliance had to only create a new missile production line. Even if Beowulf and Haven hadn't come in to help, there were still the Andermani who could have begun their own production of Apollo, so that's something that would be solved in within maybe a year. The SLN, on the other hand, had to R&D a complete SD(P) (a six-year job) and a workable MDM with range comparable to the Mk23, from scratch. The original, pre-Eric timeline, did give the SLN time to do exactly that.

And Apollo wasn't needed for the SLN. The Mk23 that had been in production since Operation Buttercup would have been more than enough against the SLN. So, like you said, they could have raided the forts' caches and replaced those with Mk42 4DM (which was likely the plan anyway, so likely ongoing).

The limiting factor for Apollo at the time of that meeting wasn't the SLN, but the RHN. Given the system defence missiles already deployed, the MBS and Yeltsin's Star and probably soon New Berlin were safe from any RHN incursion, so they couldn't lose the war. But if Haven decided to resume the war, they had 600+ SD(P)s, so the Manticore Alliance might not be able to win it either, not in the short term and not without causing devastating losses to Capital Fleet, which would lead to revanchism in a couple of decades.

And I bet that Theisman knew this too, and that White Haven knew that Theisman would know. Theisman wasn't going to resume a war he couldn't win, getting Havenite spacers killed and warships destroyed in the process. Especially since this meeting is happening while Honor is in Nouveau Paris meeting with Theisman and Pritchart, and she's probably sent at least one courier back with news.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:He seemed to be a good enough CO not to consider an EE-level attack. He was going to surrender without firing a shot once he realised just how badly he had been trapped. He'd surely have done that after having exchanged long-distance missile fire and obtained some results, but found his fleet being pounded to scrap a dozen SDs per missile wave (like Hajdu later was, five BCs at a time, at Hypatia).

His predicament is how to communicate he's going to surrender without exposing his ships even more. The missiles aren't to stop coming just because he's striking wedges.

I think you are way overestimating his survival time. Spindle showed us a cruiser can guide enough to kill three SDs per round. They'll have plenty of fire control from Mycroft. I think Filareta would fare no better than Chin did when facing Honor.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I think you are way overestimating his survival time. Spindle showed us a cruiser can guide enough to kill three SDs per round. They'll have plenty of fire control from Mycroft. I think Filareta would fare no better than Chin did when facing Honor.

They would, but at the same time they wouldn't need to destroy 60 SDs at a time either. They could make Exclamation Point again and not unacceptably add to the risk factor.

Chin was different because she had capable RHN SD(P)s and she was in position to continue pounding the survivors of Kuzak's Third Fleet. Her presence was an unacceptable risk, she needed to have been driven from the MBS with all haste.

That's also different from Saltash, when 5 Rolands under Commodore Zavala faced 4 BCs. Zavala had his 5 destroyers fire four double-double broadsides in rapid succession, sending 120 missiles in each wave, enough to obliterate those BCs. But this scenario was pitting 5 destroyers armed with Mk16 DDMs and no FTL control against 4 BCs, so he couldn't afford to enter their range. The MBS vs Filareta scenario would be of Mk23 with FTL control, so much longer range and much better accuracy, plus more options to fall back on. Also more Solarian spacers dying.

munroburton wrote:
Every single ship, minor station and satellite around Manticore, Sphinx, Gryphon and their moons had passive sensors recording constantly, like some cars nowadays collect footage from as many as seven cameras and stores it for a period of time before overwriting the oldest. Black box stuff.

Here, I want you to tell me what color card I am holding up. Seems easy? But to make this a little more challenging I'm going to have these two million candlepower power spotlights next to me focused on your face and we have 20 constantly color changing 100,000 candlepower strobes going off around the room. Are you ready?

Oh, yes, you can use your phone to record it. You want help? Sure, I've got a lot of extra million candlepower spotlights here, bring them on in.

kzt wrote:Here, I want you to tell me what color card I am holding up. Seems easy? But to make this a little more challenging I'm going to have these two million candlepower power spotlights next to me focused on your face and we have 20 constantly color changing 100,000 candlepower strobes going off around the room. Are you ready?

It drops off with distance. So if it's saturating every sensor within a light-minute, use those further out. At some point the attenuation will make it within non-saturation range, which easily tells you how strong that original signal was.

n7axw wrote:I've been wondering why it was assumed that Darius would be less exposed than Galton. It seems to me more the luck of the draw. Some survey ship could have stumbled across Darius
just as Ruth managed to notice something odd out on that dwarf system that the Alliance decided to investigate. What makes Darius less likely to be found?

Don

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Galton is reached via normal space. Darius is reached by wormhole. Unless you know the details of a wormhole you can't infer distance.

Thus transit times allowed them to draw a sphere on which Galton was expected to be found--and they had data to plot two such spheres. The intersection of the surfaces of two spheres is a circle. A big circle, but that narrowed it down enough to make sending cautious survey ships to every likely prospect.

Darius, however, even if you trace it to the wormhole you at best get the surface of a sphere around the other end of the wormhole--and you don't even know where the center is. Thus you gained no useful information.

cthia wrote:It may be grasping at straws, but in another thread I went out on a limb and suggested that Darius actually could be an uninhabitable planet. To everyone except an entity with their affinity for fondling DNA. Let's just say I wouldn't be surprised.

Disagree--Houdini refugees went to Darius and can live unprotected upon it's surface.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:I think you are way overestimating his survival time. Spindle showed us a cruiser can guide enough to kill three SDs per round. They'll have plenty of fire control from Mycroft. I think Filareta would fare no better than Chin did when facing Honor.

They would, but at the same time they wouldn't need to destroy 60 SDs at a time either. They could make Exclamation Point again and not unacceptably add to the risk factor.

The only way he doesn't face the same fate as Chin is if Manticore pulls it's punches--and that would depend on it's ammunition supply. Plenty of overkill--fire one limited volley and demand surrender. Marginal--throw as much as you can control in the first volley because the attrition from the defenses is independent of how much you throw.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

kzt wrote:Here, I want you to tell me what color card I am holding up. Seems easy? But to make this a little more challenging I'm going to have these two million candlepower power spotlights next to me focused on your face and we have 20 constantly color changing 100,000 candlepower strobes going off around the room. Are you ready?

It drops off with distance. So if it's saturating every sensor within a light-minute, use those further out. At some point the attenuation will make it within non-saturation range, which easily tells you how strong that original signal was.

You mean if you are inside the beam of a cruiser scale graser? Because that’s the only signal that doesn’t follow inverse square law. Is that what you are saying?

You really think that it’s at all reasonable to expect that there is an appropriate detector within the probably 100 meter wide beam at a distance of several million km or more? Space is very, very big. There is much greater density of aircraft in the sky that spacecraft are in the void between planets in the manticoran system. Walk out of you house and shine a laser straight up for one second. What do you think the odds are that you illuminated a jet? That probably several orders of magnitude higher that a laser hitting a random ship somewhere with a laser.