?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The next problem is we know that the spider's acceleration is dependent on the number of tractors it can mount on its surface. So that speaks against small assets having high acceleration. But again we don't know what that is going to be. We just know it isn't anywhere near as fast as a wedge missile, and "hundreds of gravities" is also very much below what an RD can do.

Very, very much below.
*ART says "Without Ghost Rider’s onboard fusion plants, Solarian reconnaissance platforms had both lower acceleration rates and—compared to their Manticoran counterparts—pitiful endurance. Five thousand gravities was about the best they could turn out, and they couldn’t maintain even that power level for very long."

And for Ghost Riders - and I've noted 3 data points.
* SftW says "Ghost Rider platforms, loping along at the low (for them) acceleration of only five thousand gravities in order to stay stealthy" (That was at 4 LM from the enemy)
* SoV says "Ghost Rider drones sped ahead of them at 10,000 gravities"
* And then SoF's text doesn't state a specific accel; but provides enough time, distance, velocity values that it's possible to calculate that the Ghost Rider drones probably had to hold 20,000 gees to get to the distance and velocity stated in the time specified.

But even a poor RD probably seems to have more than 10x the acceleration of a g-torp or spider recon drone (though the spider drives might have enough extra endurance to generate more cumulative delta V than an SLN RD. And a Ghost Rider drone has 20-40x the accel - and probably can keep it up for as long.

Heavens to Murgatroyd, the brake-n-loiter tactic will allow the g-torps to infest every corner of the galaxy. At least every corner of your system. They are hanging out at junctions, in orbit, at space stations, museums and restaurants. They have infested your entire system.

With access to Manty tech, a g-torp can get smaller and more durable. Just like Silver Bullets. But as far as durability, if their nest is an LD that is nearby, the g-torps can simply be preprogrammed to return to the nest to be recharged.

They don't have to chase ships. The ships will come to them, thus, the g-torps can generate a positive intercept. This is a game changer, guys.

Game over man! Game over!

penny wrote:Heavens to Murgatroyd, the brake-n-loiter tactic will allow the g-torps to infest every corner of the galaxy. At least every corner of your system. They are hanging out at junctions, in orbit, at space stations, museums and restaurants. They have infested your entire system.

With access to Manty tech, a g-torp can get smaller and more durable. Just like Silver Bullets. But as far as durability, if their nest is an LD that is nearby, the g-torps can simply be preprogrammed to return to the nest to be recharged.

They don't have to chase ships. The ships will come to them, thus, the g-torps can generate a positive intercept. This is a game changer, guys.

Game over man! Game over!

Hence why we keep saying there's no reason to risk trying to sneak your large expensive LD into knife fighting range of an enemy when it can hang way back and direct g-torps all over a system.

Providence


A Nearby Park in NC
(true story) ...


I have to pee. I am in a rather expansive park. There are not a lot of people in any one spot. So I notice a nice little area just around the bend that appears as if it would offer me better cover from prying eyes. So I mosey on around the corner of a big protruding and bushy tree and I proceed to take out my weapon in which to pee. Then the ground appeared to shake. Rather it felt like it had shaken. But something told me to look up.

Holy shit! Staring right at me was the biggest fucking spider. It was at that moment when I realized the earthquake I thought I felt was instead the vibrations emanating from his web. The web was pulsating. I realized that the spider was poised to strike! Right onto my face! And he was situated at the best tactical position. Perfectly above my head. Way above. Way too close. And way too ominously-fucking big.

I freeze. Panicked with fear. As afraid as I had ever been as a kid. Fucking Spiders! But there is respect as well. I slowly back pedal away from him. Just like me, I assume that he doesn't want to see any sudden moves. As my weapon is still in my hand ... and both of his are bigger than mine.

As I began to get a safe distance away from the spider - for the spider's sake as well as my own -- the vibrations of his web began to slow and eventually stop. The spider had cancelled DefCon 1.

Only after I could no longer perceive a threat is when I stop and smell the roses. I notice the elaborate handiwork of the spider. Only now can I appreciate why his nest was so hidden. He had spun web that link with faraway trees. It seemed implausible that the spider's web can connect two massive trees from twenty to thirty yards away. Which enable the spider to sit right in a spot where no one would even think that he was lurking. Nothing can just hang in the middle of a clearing between two massive trees separated by some twenty to thirty yards. Ones mind can't naturally conceive of something being in the middle of such an expansive interstate highway. Able to sit there without moving as if not to catch your attention. A spider is suspended. Immobile.

But if my spider senses had not kicked in and detected the spider's warning initially, I would have forced the spider to attack.

If Imperator ventures too closely to an LD, it is going to bite her.

An LD is the size of a fort. And the author said a fort can destroy how many SDs? So as a rhetorical question, how can anyone expect that a single SD will survive an attack from a big hairy Spider. Or worse, assume the big hairy Spider won't attack.

Predatory arachnids are not in the habit of letting prey just walk right by or stumble into their web without striking.

Every memory of that encounter consumes me with disbelief that I could ever allow myself into such a vulnerable position.

penny wrote:If Imperator ventures too closely to an LD, it is going to bite her.

Yes, but as I've been trying to say, it's criminal incompetence for the LD skipper to allow this to happen in the first place. HMS Imperator or any other SD is not going to be travelling alone, so this means this LD is allowing at a minimum a squadron of cruisers along with this SD to come close to itself.

I'm not talking about falling into an LD-laid trap, because said trap would not include coming close to the LD itself. The LD has options available to attack from a large stand-off distance.

An LD is the size of a fort. And the author said a fort can destroy how many SDs? So as a rhetorical question, how can anyone expect that a single SD will survive an attack from a big hairy Spider. Or worse, assume the big hairy Spider won't attack.

We're not.

We're saying that the LD can't survive the counter-attack either. It may raise a bubblewall, but then it can't accelerate - that would make it a static fort in enemy space, which is pointless. Such a fort may be able to launch enough missiles to take the cruiser and destroyer escort, but by this time any other assets in the system will have locked on the position of this LD and fired MDMs at it, because the bubblewall is highly visible.

No, the LD must be able to survive without having to raise the bubblewall in the first place. That means not being anywhere close to the escorts' counter-attack.

Predatory arachnids are not in the habit of letting prey just walk right by or stumble into their web without striking.

And taking a page from the arachnids, they don't attack their prey until after said prey has become ensnared in the web. I don't know for sure without consulting Wikipedia, but I'd also expect spiders to not come close to large and dangerous prey until after they've become tired. That is, the spider is sitting away from the prey, out of reach. Only after this does it come close to inject the venom and kill the prey.

That will not work for every prey: some of them may be able to get away from the web, even damaging it, especially large ones. But the spider survives and can repair the web. So long as sufficient prey do get caught and tire, the spider can thrive.

I see the problem here. The problem is the forum's inability to accept the discussion as is. It is an issue that has always plagued me. To properly discuss a thread, the thread's premise, its entry point, must be accepted. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how we get to that point, but we are discussing the scenario from that point on. We are not discussing the trip or how we got from point A to point B. We are discussing what happens after we arrive at point B. After we arrive at Disneyland. It doesn't matter that we had to change busses several times, 23 subways, a train, a plane, several mopeds, a horse drawn carriage... yeah, that's another discussion.

For example, over in the Eridani Edict of the most Dismissive Kind thread, I put forth a scenario that might enable the MA to wipe out the entire line of succession by using the full brunt of their bag of toys. It is a simple premise. Coral everyone into one reasonably sized kill basket like Mount Royal Palace, then blow it up.

Simple premise. But most people refused to accept the premise itself as the entry level to the discussion. The details of how the MAlign can coral so many people into one kill basket -- an entity who can move entire fleets around belonging to someone else -- shouldn't be necessary or questioned. The MA won't have a problem figuring it out.

"The MA will never get them all together" was a silly argument that disrespected the premise of the thread. The thread assumes that they did get them all together. I wanted to move past the HOW the MA achieved the impossible and managed to hit the lottery. I wanted to deal with the aftermath. The aftermath is a MBS with no Winton blood left and Honor pretty much is the only survivor. Would she become Queen?"

It took us a while to get to that point. Eventually we got there because of the imagination of only a few people who "got" the thread and accepted its entry point. That thread was created back in 2016. Eight years ago. After eight years Thinksmarkedly is now proposing something similar. Kew an installation, Harrington House, and kill a lot of key characters. Are my proposals eight years ahead of their time?

Fast forward to this thread. A lot of the same issues are causing a misunderstanding.

Premise: If an LD gets a chance to bite Imperator, it will. It doesn't matter how the two will get into striking range of each other. Shit happens. And the LD may strike even if it has to abandon its current mission.

And I do not think arrogance should allow one to assign blame to the LD for allowing such a scenario to happen. That is preposterous. Your imagination is limited and born out of arrogance and complacence for the almighty Manty. My entire point for posting that true story of me almost walking into a huge spider web was for the sole purpose of showing that it can happen. How in the hell did I manage to let that happen is beyond me. But the spider was not in danger. I was. The forest has been missed for the trees, the fact that I almost stumbled into the spider and its web highlights the fact that I didn't detect it. Since I didn't detect it, I was not at battle stations. Moreover, I had exposed myself! The spider had ambushed me and literally caught me with my pants down and with my useless weapon in my hand.

But the spider can not be blamed if that is his nest! The lack of imagination confines your thoughts to a MBS that is intact and had not been attacked. After a war has started -- the opening volley in the MBS will kick the war off -- then assets will be lost. Screens will be lost. Part of Honor's fleet will be gone. It will become a chess match.

My strategy for destroying the MBS has always been the same. The MA has unprecedented technology that will allow them access to tactics unavailable to any other combatant.

For instance, ambushing an opponent is a staple of war. A common tactic. An LDs stealth will allow it to do so easily. Regardless of whether the LD is in danger itself.

Mousetrapping is a tactic that every combatant in the Honorverse has attempted to utilize at some point. The MA can easily deploy this tactic because of its stealth. That is why I said that the LDs will have varying missions. I disagree that an LD should not slither deeply inside the inner system setting up a nest. It can easily do so as far as I am concerned. I have faith in its stealth.

Getting sufficient resources behind enemy lines has always been both a plan and a problem. Most of you are not carrying that thought through. You can only imagine a healthy MBS whose shiny new ships don't have any scratches on them before the first flaming datum. After that, all bets are off. And if an LD or three has gotten behind enemy lines and Grand fleet is taking casualties battling the MA's ships with wedges, then Honor's weakened fleet, scrambling, anxious, maneuvering under fire while being completely oblivious of the LDs location or existence, can certainly stumble right into an LDs kill zone. That LD will strike! It has a chance to eliminate Honor!

Another tactical reason the LD should slither in-system is when the war kicks off all of the g-torps or Silver Bullets that have been pre-deployed will have been used to prosecute the war. An LD will still represent a huge resource of g-torps being deployed from behind enemy lines. Effectively mousetrapping a completely oblivious fleet. When you are being mousetrapped by invisible combatants, how do you prevent it? You cannot see them maneuvering. You are not aware it is happening.

Loosen your imagination or I will always be eight years ahead in chess moves.

penny wrote:I see the problem here. The problem is the forum's inability to accept the discussion as is. It is an issue that has always plagued me. To properly discuss a thread, the thread's premise, its entry point, must be accepted. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how we get to that point, but we are discussing the scenario from that point on. We are not discussing the trip or how we got from point A to point B. We are discussing what happens after we arrive at point B. After we arrive at Disneyland. It doesn't matter that we had to change busses several times, 23 subways, a train, a plane, several mopeds, a horse drawn carriage... yeah, that's another discussion.

If we really were required to follow that rule, then you are way out of bounds; since the entry for this thread was the following question:

What is the most important technology that could fall into [MALIGN RMN SLN] hands

MIND CONTROL IS DEFINITELY A GIVEN, YET STILL IN PLAY.

As it happens that question was abandoned before many pages were entered, yet here we are at page 153. But that is NOT a forum rule, so we can and will discuss how we got to point B, if we want. Or even if point A was a good place to begin.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:If Imperator ventures too closely to an LD, it is going to bite her.

Yes, but as I've been trying to say, it's criminal incompetence for the LD skipper to allow this to happen in the first place. HMS Imperator or any other SD is not going to be travelling alone, so this means this LD is allowing at a minimum a squadron of cruisers along with this SD to come close to itself.

I'm not talking about falling into an LD-laid trap, because said trap would not include coming close to the LD itself. The LD has options available to attack from a large stand-off distance.

An LD is the size of a fort. And the author said a fort can destroy how many SDs? So as a rhetorical question, how can anyone expect that a single SD will survive an attack from a big hairy Spider. Or worse, assume the big hairy Spider won't attack.

We're not.

We're saying that the LD can't survive the counter-attack either. It may raise a bubblewall, but then it can't accelerate - that would make it a static fort in enemy space, which is pointless. Such a fort may be able to launch enough missiles to take the cruiser and destroyer escort, but by this time any other assets in the system will have locked on the position of this LD and fired MDMs at it, because the bubblewall is highly visible.

No, the LD must be able to survive without having to raise the bubblewall in the first place. That means not being anywhere close to the escorts' counter-attack.

Predatory arachnids are not in the habit of letting prey just walk right by or stumble into their web without striking.

And taking a page from the arachnids, they don't attack their prey until after said prey has become ensnared in the web. I don't know for sure without consulting Wikipedia, but I'd also expect spiders to not come close to large and dangerous prey until after they've become tired. That is, the spider is sitting away from the prey, out of reach. Only after this does it come close to inject the venom and kill the prey.

That will not work for every prey: some of them may be able to get away from the web, even damaging it, especially large ones. But the spider survives and can repair the web. So long as sufficient prey do get caught and tire, the spider can thrive.

Another point, even if a LD is the size of a Fort, doesn't mean it has the firepower of a fort. A fort has several prime advantages over a starship other than shear size.

1) Geometry - a Wedge based ship has the double ended spindle shape so it can form a wedge and sails, and have an optimized compensator to allow for the maximum acceleration. A spider drive ship has a truncated pyramidal shape for the Spider Drive.

A Fort can be almost any shape, but are usually an oblate sphere with a wedge ring on one pole, a design optimized for defense.

2) Forts don't allow much mass for drive systems - cutting out a compensator, alpha nodes, hypergenerators, etc, allow for more mass % to be spent on weapons and defenses. A classic SD devotes just 55-60% of it's mass to weapons and defenses. We don't know what the mass proportion of a LD is, but we know the Spider Drive is more mass intensive in smaller ships than a Wedge system is.

3) Forts devote a smaller mass % to crew recreations, supplies, and spares. Forts do not need to be an island on their own, surviving for 3-6 months under their own auspices, like you would expect a starship to do. Running out of any consumable in 2 weeks is not as critical for a fort as it is for a starship. Forts can offload any non-warfighting function to an adjacent civilian type platform that supports it. A starship has a hydroponic bay to provide continuous fresh food, where a Fort can have the same delivered daily from a nearby planet or specialized habitat.

4) Forts do not need as many non-warfighting personnel - Admin and support personnel can be stationed on nearby supply/support/repair platforms. This allows a group of forts to have a central group of support personnel to cover their needs.

5) Forts are not just what is in their shell. Forts are surrounded by clouds of bomb pumped mines, shoals of system defense missile pods, Independent Energy Weapons Platforms (IEWPs), and remote missile launchers that they control. So when it is said that these 5 forts can destroy 30 SDs, the discussion is actually the combat power of all the dispersed systems attached to the command which are controlled by the forts, not just the forts themselves.

So pound for pound, a Fort has a higher mass % dedicated to weapons and defenses than a starship - most likely >85% is dedicated to weapons inside their shell, and 3-400% the weapons in a ship if you include the dispersed combat power. In other words, a 7 million ton Fort has more combat power than a 8.4 Mton Gryphon SD with just it's internal capability, and the combat power of 4 or 5 Gryphons with it's dispersed hardware.

Because it's a mobile unit, a 10 Mton LD does not have any where near the combat power of a 10 Mton Fort, even if they mass the same. In fact, because of mass penalities due to the need for a bubble sidewall, and the extra mass of a spider drive and other factors associated with the unique geometry of ship required for the spider drive, it is possible that a 10Mton LD may have less combat power than a 8.7 Mton Invictus. I agree that the LD probably carries more, but given what we know and don't know, we really can't make that determination.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:I see the problem here. The problem is the forum's inability to accept the discussion as is. It is an issue that has always plagued me. To properly discuss a thread, the thread's premise, its entry point, must be accepted. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how we get to that point, but we are discussing the scenario from that point on. We are not discussing the trip or how we got from point A to point B. We are discussing what happens after we arrive at point B. After we arrive at Disneyland. It doesn't matter that we had to change busses several times, 23 subways, a train, a plane, several mopeds, a horse drawn carriage... yeah, that's another discussion.

If we really were required to follow that rule, then you are way out of bounds; since the entry for this thread was the following question:

What is the most important technology that could fall into [MALIGN RMN SLN] hands

MIND CONTROL IS DEFINITELY A GIVEN, YET STILL IN PLAY.

As it happens that question was abandoned before many pages were entered, yet here we are at page 153. But that is NOT a forum rule, so we can and will discuss how we got to point B, if we want. Or even if point A was a good place to begin.

Sigh.

Please follow the context. "Thread" is used loosely in this instance only as a label for the current discussion. MyCall4Me was questioning the discussion of many other threads of conversation in his thread.

The ? thread is an amalgamation of many concepts.

No need to bring up the rules. The spirit of the law should carry over into every discussion. For the sake of the discussion.

penny wrote:I see the problem here. The problem is the forum's inability to accept the discussion as is. It is an issue that has always plagued me. To properly discuss a thread, the thread's premise, its entry point, must be accepted. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how we get to that point, but we are discussing the scenario from that point on. We are not discussing the trip or how we got from point A to point B. We are discussing what happens after we arrive at point B. After we arrive at Disneyland. It doesn't matter that we had to change busses several times, 23 subways, a train, a plane, several mopeds, a horse drawn carriage... yeah, that's another discussion.

tlb wrote:If we really were required to follow that rule, then you are way out of bounds; since the entry for this thread was the following question:

What is the most important technology that could fall into [MALIGN RMN SLN] hands

MIND CONTROL IS DEFINITELY A GIVEN, YET STILL IN PLAY.

As it happens that question was abandoned before many pages were entered, yet here we are at page 153. But that is NOT a forum rule, so we can and will discuss how we got to point B, if we want. Or even if point A was a good place to begin.

penny wrote:Sigh.

Please follow the context. "Thread" is used loosely in this instance only as a label for the current discussion. MyCall4Me was questioning the discussion of many other threads of conversation in his thread.

This thread is an amalgamation of many concepts.

No need to bring up the rules. The spirit of the law should carry over into every discussion. For the same of the discussion.

The point that I was making remains, even under your limitation of what a "thread" means. From Perry Mason I remember the concept that when a piece of paper in introduced in court, then it is permitted to examine "all four corners". You prefer that responses to something which you post should accept some of what you say as foundational to anything written in reply. It is as though you see yourself as the conductor of a student orchestra and demand that we all stick to the sheet music that you have handed out.