Attacking Darius:

tlb wrote:If you mean the destroyers that Byng shot up, when talking about wedges being down in orbit; it is my understanding that is part of diplomatic protocol when visiting a neutral sovereign system.

tlb wrote:
For KZT's example I will need to reread the relevant text. I am guessing it is in A Rising Thunder, as part of Admiral Filareta's attack on Manticore? It is possible to be overly terse.

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:This begs the question, do Forts always have their wedges and sidewalls up?

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Honor once mentioned that the forts go through a readiness cycle where they are in close to the WHJ and are supposed to be fully operational and ready for immediate action, and to where they were much further out and doing maintenance etc. She still had suspicions about how ready the forts would be to an actual 'this is that day' event. But that was the crew, not the fort's systems.

Basically, keeping your system working is a logistical problem. The RMN plans to replace ship nodes and do other engineering systems repair during major maintenance work, which is scheduled out for years. This is also what the production of the replacement parts is based on. This is not the rate that is needed if you keep the wedge up all the time or abuse it. This is based on x hours of operation per year, of which y will be at B power level, etc.

If you wear out nodes in 1 year vs 5 years you need new nodes and a maintenance overhaul. Does the RMN have 5x the expected overhaul facilities? The answer is, of course, no. Nor do they have the parts to sustain that. The parts are probably easier to come up with than the facilities and staff to repair hundreds of warships, but without both...

If a fort is supposed to be running with the bubble up all the time the wear will be part of the logistics plan and either they durability of the system will be sufficient to reach scheduled maintenance intervals or provision will be provided to rapidly repair/swap out on-site the components.

It's operating as designed, so it's fine. Until someone blew up everyone making spare parts, but David said, 'never mind' so that's all cool.

kzt wrote:Honor once mentioned that the forts go through a readiness cycle where they are in close to the WHJ and are supposed to be fully operational and ready for immediate action, and to where they were much further out and doing maintenance etc. She still had suspicions about how ready the forts would be to an actual 'this is that day' event. But that was the crew, not the fort's systems.

Basically, keeping your system working is a logistical problem.

cthia wrote:I am almost certain that is the passage I recall. I just don't see how it is managed even before Oyster Bay. It certainly makes you wonder how functional the SL's forts were. Or the Peeps at one time.

P.S. It reminds me of the images of broken Russian trucks which attacked Ukraine that were reportedly in a state of poor maintenance.

The SL can afford to maintain its hardware, but they don't. The Peeps at one point questionable. The RMN can afford it, but probably with so many more forts where do they get the time. And, handwavium.

kzt wrote:"Aside from the two squadrons of Agamemnon-class BC(P)s of the ready response force, Third Fleet’s hyper generators were powered completely down. It would take a Saganami-class cruiser thirty-seven minutes—and an SD like Lysander or a CLAC like her own Fafnir over forty—to bring up their generators and translate. For that matter, except for the ready response squadrons, every ship would have to bring her impeller nodes up from scratch at the same time, and that alone would take forty minutes, so not even the Saganami was getting into hyper any sooner than Fafnir."

cthia wrote:
So, does protocol prevent having, at least, warm impellers? Not that warm impellers will amount to much if an LD attacks. But still.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Even though this passage talks about "impeller nodes up from scratch," it's talking about hyper translation to alpha. We know that the generators can be cold, ready and translating. The latter is when you press the button to translate from ready and takes up to 3 and a half minutes for an SD.

I'm trying to understand the linkage between that and the conclusion of translating. There's something there. Why couldn't a Saganami translate sonner than Fafnir?

kzt wrote:Because translating without a working impeller drive or sidewall isn't a very good idea?

The point is that the ENTIRE FLEET was parked with their impellers cold. They has two BC(P) squadrons with warm drives, everyone else was cold.

What would have happened to them if 200 graser torps swept on it? "Commander Jones, you are the highest ranking officer left from 3rd fleet. Can you explain to the court of inquiry what happened to the rest of the fleet?"

Hence I find it feasible that the RMN still has no clue what the hell really happened to the orbital platforms. This wasn't just something David stuck in the last book like the planet, he's been showing that the RMN either doesn't understand

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Since historically subs have been known to operate in Wolfpacks, and since the LDs may also use that tactic, is there a reason that two or more LDs can't form up as close as possible to each other like two cowboys standing back to back?

They could enjoy mutual support: Which for an LD would include CM support. And stealth support, since a certain face of an LD is less stealthy to a passing drone.

Spiders should be able to get very close to each other since they don't have the same limitation of proximity imposed by a wedge.

This invokes the scary image of a nest of Spiders all intertwined together. "OMG! GET 'EM OFF ME!"

We do not know if the tractors interfere with each other when two spider-drive ships get too close to each other.

There is a problem (I do not know the severity) when two stealth spider-drive ships get back to back, since they are both trying to radiate heat out of the back; you would seem to have created an example of a black-body heat source - now sideways out of the gap between them.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's what I thought too. If it were possible to block the radiating with something that easily, it would have been done. Consequently, the fact that it wasn't means it can't be done (or no one has come up with a way to do so).

The other danger is that if each ship is radiating in the direction of the other, they're effectively bathing each other in warmth, which means those ships will be warmer than the interplanetary medium.

cthia wrote:Textev says that most of the waste heat is used. So only a small fraction of it is exhaust. I don't think blocking the waste heat would work at all. Consider appliances or equipment that give off waste heat. You don't want anything blocking that heat from being carried away from the equipment. That could cause all kinds of problems.

But suppose two or more Spiders "nesting" together can absorb the waste heat to power some kind of external subsystem that is used only when Spiders are together. It could be used to charge capacitors, spin the nest of Spiders, power an energy weapon, etc. The external system might even use all of the waste heat making the system as a whole even stealthier.

The tactic could be designed to be used as mutual CM defense, mutual bubblewall defense, and mutual stealth support through waste heat recycling.

Of course, this is all assuming the tractors don't interfere with each other.

But about that. If they don't interfere with each other, then maybe they can be made to operate with each other... like two similarly charged magnetic fields pushing against each other to create motion.