?

tlb wrote:PS: the absolute worst thing I have seen occurs in Star Wars, where they show an anti-gravity oxcart. Either put wheels on it or use a faction of the energy that is levitating it, to get rid of the ox and move it forward.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I disagree--Star Wars repulsars seem to be basically zero-energy devices. Levitating doesn't actually do any work, thus there is no theoretical requirement for energy. While it's a major hand-wave look through the series, all ground effect repulsars work that way.

cthia wrote:
-snip-

Also, if two black holes are created at their Swarsczchild radius from each other and are spinning, they might create a corrider between the two for a ship to be shot through like a whiplash.

cthia wrote:Also, if two black holes are created at their Swarsczchild radius from each other and are spinning, they might create a corrider between the two for a ship to be shot through like a whiplash.

cthia wrote:I suspect that this phenomena might be a source of tachyonic emissions.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:But that dependence might be a result of not being able to reach viable ramming speeds. And those speeds, the god of the HV has decreed, apparently begins at ~ .9C.

You don't need that sort of velocity to ram--you just need a way past the wedge. The logic behind the laserhead made sense in the SDM era, but the MDM changed things--it is almost as survivable ramming as it is at maximum standoff. Sure, it's a sitting duck for the point defenses, but the point defenses will be reloading during that last .2 seconds.

You still need standoff to get around wedges and you might need to use some standoff to avoid fratricide if too many missiles make it through (but I think this unlikely, if they are even tens of microseconds apart there will be no fratricide), but the desired attack should always be ram.

Jonathan"S wrote:Well also a way through the sidewall. I don't know what, if any, velocity would let a missile pierce that. But we know that in HotQ a pair of 78-ton impacts at 0.25c on a BC's sidewall were harmless.

But I also thing you're overstating their resistance to point defense. Even if an MDM was traveling infinitely close to the speed of light it'd still take it 11.7 seconds to cover the 3.5 million km envelope of a Mk31 CM. Sure at that speed it'd take about 0.333s to cover the PDLC envelope. And yes, the current cycle rate on an point defense laser emitters is 16 seconds; but a Nike-class BC(L) carries 30*14=420 such emitters on each flank, allowing it to keeps up a steady 25 shots/second; meaning it could get off at least 7 shots at a MDM closing at lightspeed - so not all the emitters are going to be recharging during that 1/3rd of a second it takes for light to streak through the PDLC envelope. (And of course capital ships mount even more clusters)

But, more importantly to my mind, at even normal MDM terminal velocity the missile has no ability to turn a corners. And while there may be some velocity at which a missile can blow through a sidewall, there's no evidence the same would every be true of a wedge. So all the ship would need to do to be utterly invulnerable to missile ramming attacks; not matter how high velocity they were, was roll just far enough that the wedge is interposed between the missile and the hull.

At that point you're back to have to make a 'snap shot' with a laserhead because there's no ramming target left.


And trying to reach those speeds with a drone drive is going to be a long slow process; as even in flat out, non-stealthy, mode like we saw at Mobius they've got less than 1/2 the acceleration of the low accel setting of a missile. Try to keep the accel low enough that you can hide the acceleration from just distant grav sensors and it's a quarter of that (or about 11% of the missile's low accel). So for a semi-stealthy accel you're looking at an hour and 21 minutes, covering over half a billion km (~32 lightminutes) to get to just the 0.8c an MDM can hit in 9 minutes. And at that velocity the bow shock is going to be really noticeable when it flies by your distant FTL-comm equipped picket. So even with a stealthy drive it's not sneaking up on a first line target at that velocity. (And against a 2nd or 3rd rate opponent you don't need to do anything fancy, your laserheads will rip them apart anyway)

infinite mass projectile

tlb wrote:Just projecting to a fixed spot does not provide motion. It has to be projected and allowed to move in such a way that it and the ship fall toward each other (so there are equal and opposite forces acting on it and the ship). Then it has to collapse before the ship is destroyed and a new field projected further out and so on. The act of creating and collapsing the field cannot impose any additional forces on the ship (I am not convinced that requirement can be met, because the attraction spot has gained momentum - equal and opposite forces mean there is no net momentum change).

There is no special avenue in this method that would allow more than sub-light flight.

Jonathan_S wrote:Well also a way through the sidewall. I don't know what, if any, velocity would let a missile pierce that. But we know that in HotQ a pair of 78-ton impacts at 0.25c on a BC's sidewall were harmless.

But I also thing you're overstating their resistance to point defense. Even if an MDM was traveling infinitely close to the speed of light it'd still take it 11.7 seconds to cover the 3.5 million km envelope of a Mk31 CM.

Sure at that speed it'd take about 0.333s to cover the PDLC envelope. And yes, the current cycle rate on an point defense laser emitters is 16 seconds; but a Nike-class BC(L) carries 30*14=420 such emitters on each flank, allowing it to keeps up a steady 25 shots/second; meaning it could get off at least 7 shots at a MDM closing at lightspeed - so not all the emitters are going to be recharging during that 1/3rd of a second it takes for light to streak through the PDLC envelope. (And of course capital ships mount even more clusters)

But, more importantly to my mind, at even normal MDM terminal velocity the missile has no ability to turn a corners. And while there may be some velocity at which a missile can blow through a sidewall, there's no evidence the same would every be true of a wedge. So all the ship would need to do to be utterly invulnerable to missile ramming attacks; not matter how high velocity they were, was roll just far enough that the wedge is interposed between the missile and the hull.

And trying to reach those speeds with a drone drive is going to be a long slow process; as even in flat out, non-stealthy, mode like we saw at Mobius they've got less than 1/2 the acceleration of the low accel setting of a missile. Try to keep the accel low enough that you can hide the acceleration from just distant grav sensors and it's a quarter of that (or about 11% of the missile's low accel). So for a semi-stealthy accel you're looking at an hour and 21 minutes, covering over half a billion km (~32 lightminutes) to get to just the 0.8c an MDM can hit in 9 minutes. And at that velocity the bow shock is going to be really noticeable when it flies by your distant FTL-comm equipped picket. So even with a stealthy drive it's not sneaking up on a first line target at that velocity. (And against a 2nd or 3rd rate opponent you don't need to do anything fancy, your laserheads will rip them apart anyway)

cthia wrote:Also, if two black holes are created at their SR from each other and are spinning, they might create a corrider between the two for a ship to be shot through like a whiplash.

Or, if a second BH is created ahead of the first their attraction would be even greater, pulling the tethered ship along with.

tlb wrote:My problem with the suspension of disbelief is that it is easier to do where I do not have a standard to measure against what is presented. I have very few preconceived notions that apply to the "wedge", so it does not bother me as much as a sealed box (in an otherwise scientific work) that floats and does NO work no matter how much weight you load onto it. Now if this were a fantasy world of magic, then different rules apply. So maybe I should treat Stars Wars as pure fantasy, with its mystical-magical "force" throwing logic out of the window.

Loren Pechtel wrote:And I'm not aware of any story that uses a black hole drive for FTL. Governor and Fury don't--the black hole drive simply accelerates the starship to the .9c required for FTL insertion, the FTL drive is separate.

The novel uses Fasset Drives — that is, a ship generates an artificial black hole that draws the ship toward it. At the same time, the black hole moves away from the ship since the ship is generating the thing. This leads to unlimited acceleration. When the ship hits 1.0c, something technobabbly happens and the ship enters wormhole space, where it can go much faster than should be possible (to the tune of several thousand times the speed of light).