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Devil's Advocate. Don't forget that in this universe there is only one Deity. What RFC says happens. Sure he is remarkably consistent across more than two decades, but don't try to second guess him.
Plot is always important, and RFC must be aware that it would be nice to settle down spoiling grandkids and such. My bet is that he will seek to wrap up the series with a dramatic ending, that we poor mortals can't anticipate.
He has somewhat ruled out a fusion between all of his universes in his comedy fan fic, but it may still have indicated the direction of his thoughts.
Meanwhile discussions like this remind me of the medieval squabblings of how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.

How maneuverable are g-torps? Because of malign stealth, the LD knows that Honor leaves her ship and boards a shuttle at midnite. An LD can fire a volley from the edge of the system and time its arrival with Honor's departure.

Alphas.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:All this is saying is that taking Honor's ship out is an opportunity to be seized, not a mission to be planned. A planned mission would deploy stand-off range stealth weapons.

Or at least if it is to be planned the ship to take her out on isn't HMS Imperator in the heart of 8th fleet -- it'd be a strike on her yacht GS Paul Tankersley as the retired Admiral Harrington shuttles between Manticore and Grayson.

When the US targeted the architect of the Attack on Pearl Harbor they didn't do so by throwing all the US fast battleships on a suicide mission to take him out on his flagship, the (world's largest) battleship Yamato. They waited until they had intelligence about when he'd be moving between bases in a nearly undefended transport aircraft and then intercepted and destroyed it.

Taking our Honor's yacht with a spider attack would be an Honorverse equivalent to Operation Vengeance - and far more plausible than planning to throw away a capital ship in a mutual kill against a flagship in the heart of its fleet defenses.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:All this is saying is that taking Honor's ship out is an opportunity to be seized, not a mission to be planned. A planned mission would deploy stand-off range stealth weapons.

Or at least if it is to be planned the ship to take her out on isn't HMS Imperator in the heart of 8th fleet -- it'd be a strike on her yacht GS Paul Tankersley as the retired Admiral Harrington shuttles between Manticore and Grayson.

When the US targeted the architect of the Attack on Pearl Harbor they didn't do so by throwing all the US fast battleships on a suicide mission to take him out on his flagship, the (world's largest) battleship Yamato. They waited until they had intelligence about when he'd be moving between bases in a nearly undefended transport aircraft and then intercepted and destroyed it.

Taking our Honor's yacht with a spider attack would be an Honorverse equivalent to Operation Vengeance - and far more plausible than planning to throw away a capital ship in a mutual kill against a flagship in the heart of its fleet defenses.

See my post above you.

penny wrote::?:

How maneuverable are g-torps? Because of malign stealth, the LD knows that Honor leaves her ship and boards a shuttle at midnite. An LD can fire a volley from the edge of the system and time its arrival with Honor's departure.

Alphas.

We don't have information on their turn rate, but we do know that they're only capable of "a few hundreds gravities" [MoH] of acceleration. (Many merchant ships, and all warships or pinnaces could outrun them in a drag race)

Nor do we know how good their targeting sensors are - but I'd assume good enough to hit a shuttle, at least in a jammer/decoy free environment when the closure rate isn't unreasonably high.

But assuming the Malign had a g-torp equipped asset hiding in normal space, well beyond the hyper limit, and it got the intel on Honor's trip at least 10 hours ahead of time then yes, they'd probably be able to hit her shuttle.

(From, say, 20 light minutes out it'd "only" take a g-torp around 4.3 hours at a presumed 300 g to get there; but it'd then be sailing past at about 46,000 km/s; so the chance that any tiny change to Honor's schedule would cause it to be out of range is way, way too high. They'd want to do a zero-zero intercept to get there a little early in case her schedule moves up slightly and to loiter should she be delayed -- plus it should be easier to target the shuttle if you're not flying past at 0.15c. But zero-zero intercept takes twice as long to fly)

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote::?:

How maneuverable are g-torps? Because of malign stealth, the LD knows that Honor leaves her ship and boards a shuttle at midnite. An LD can fire a volley from the edge of the system and time its arrival with Honor's departure.

Alphas.

We don't have information on their turn rate, but we do know that they're only capable of "a few hundreds gravities" [MoH] of acceleration. (Many merchant ships, and all warships or pinnaces could outrun them in a drag race)

Nor do we know how good their targeting sensors are - but I'd assume good enough to hit a shuttle, at least in a jammer/decoy free environment when the closure rate isn't unreasonably high.

But assuming the Malign had a g-torp equipped asset hiding in normal space, well beyond the hyper limit, and it got the intel on Honor's trip at least 10 hours ahead of time then yes, they'd probably be able to hit her shuttle.

(From, say, 20 light minutes out it'd "only" take a g-torp around 4.3 hours at a presumed 300 g to get there; but it'd then be sailing past at about 46,000 km/s; so the chance that any tiny change to Honor's schedule would cause it to be out of range is way, way too high. They'd want to do a zero-zero intercept to get there a little early in case her schedule moves up slightly and to loiter should she be delayed -- plus it should be easier to target the shuttle if you're not flying past at 0.15c. But zero-zero intercept takes twice as long to fly)

Heavens to Murgatroyd, a g-torp can brake ... then loiter? It can pat its foot lightly while waiting in your driveway and you will never even see it? Why didn't I get that memo? And why wouldn't there be a g-torp loitering off the stern of every ship?

penny wrote:
Heavens to Murgatroyd, a g-torp can brake ... then loiter? It can pat its foot lightly while waiting in your driveway and you will never even see it? Why didn't I get that memo? And why wouldn't there be a g-torp loitering off the stern of every ship?

Don't see why they couldn't brake and loiter. (At least until they run out of power). The spider drive doesn't (as far as we know) burn itself out like a missile drive does - so as long as it can run it shouldn't care if the torp flips a 180 and starts slowing down.

(Now the torps might not have sensors on their tails - so it might be 'blind' while slowing down; or need to pull "Crazy Ivans" to occasionally look where it's going.


The difficulties with having one loiter off the stern of every ship are:
(a) Too likely for one to eventually be noticed -- I did say "if the stealth held"; and that's a big if at closer range surrounded by other ships.
(b) Would be left behind each time the ship left orbit - since, as noticed, the g-torps are slower accelerating than even many merchant ships.
(c) limited endurance. Yes they seem to have power for a week or so; but that's not very long if you want to have one loitering behind every ship waiting in case the MAlign decides to order them blown up.

Jonathan_S wrote:Now the torps might not have sensors on their tails - so it might be 'blind' while slowing down; or need to pull "Crazy Ivans" to occasionally look where it's going.

It has always bothered me a little bit that a ship with a wedge had to flip stern to bow in order to slow down; since a square rigged sailing vessel could back sails to slow or even go in reverse (Old Ironsides did it while traveling at full speed ahead).

However there is no reason to suppose a spider drive ship has to do the same; if they just grip behind them instead of in front, then they will slow or stop.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Now the torps might not have sensors on their tails - so it might be 'blind' while slowing down; or need to pull "Crazy Ivans" to occasionally look where it's going.

It has always bothered me a little bit that a ship with a wedge had to flip stern to bow in order to slow down; since a square rigged sailing vessel could back sails to slow or even go in reverse (Old Ironsides did it while traveling at full speed ahead).

However there is no reason to suppose a spider drive ship has to do the same; if they just grip behind them instead of in front, then they will slow or stop.

Good point. I literally didn't think about the mechanics and just presumed it'd act like other Honorverse ships/drones/etc. But unless there's some reason the projectors (physically?) can't aim behind the ship it should just be able to point them backwards and slow down (or reverse) without flipping end for end.

I am perfectly willing to admit viewing the LDs as gigantic "submarines" that were designed to be invisible/ essentially undetectable 1st strike weapons against planetary systems as that was the tactics deployed against Manticore and Grayson in Oyster Bay. That and the bits about having to massively moved forward Oyster Bay to cripple both Manticore and Grayson too early since Manticore had totally thrown The Plan off track.

Here's the thing though-----without any more information than what we have been given about the Ghosts, Sharks and the LDs. there aren't a lot of other lines of inquiry

Sure, you COULD use the LD's to slink around wormholes (like the Manticore Junction bout actually any wormhole bridge works) and butcher mostly merchant shipping and the occasional warship as they queue ut for transit or are departing.

Yes the LDs are probably overkill for 95% of the inhabited worlds but since they are "invisible" they can hang around and be used as hope-breakers as they let the 1st round of triage and reorganizing orbital operations get almost done and then kill everybody involved in the effort. Your killing more of the best trained and experienced people in the system which further reduces the system's ability to recover... Perfect for the RF to come sailing in to save the day- at least as far as stopping raids.

The Alignment has an incredible need to remain invisible and not painted with any blame for what they rightly believe would be the ultimate reaction of people to the "genetic supermen" who intend to be the puppet masters of the Galaxy.

Or- Genocide Are Us - as I have come to see the Alignment.

What I am hoping NOT to see is a very large suite of weapons systems as different as the G-torps and the Spider Drive suddenly pop up when the Alignment decides (and it may not be that long) that the situation is even worse than they believed after Houdini went sideways, they were exposed and Galton didn't perform up to expectation in cutting back the GA fleet before being removed from the board as yet another misdirection scapegoat for the Alignment.

If the LDs can use hyperspace, then they could still hang off well beyond the sensor range of 95% of systems, drop their loads and then vanish up to a week or more before they blow the crap out some system's orbitals and kill a few million of the population.

Question, if they are in Hyperspace, is a LD also essentially invisible to every other navy's scanners.