SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority

penny wrote:We speculated on smaller hyper capable ships in-between Ghosts and LDs. An LD is a fairly large vessel, the size of a fort. Is it possible to bolt the smallest hyper capable ship on to an LD for an emergency getaway? The captain -- and in the MAN a captain might be in short supply -- does not have to go down with the ship. For the GA the smallest hyper capable ship would be a frigate, right? How much larger than a LAC is a frigate? Is it feasible for the LD to carry a hyper capable spider drive ship? Of course, as long as it does not eat into its weaponry. Internal or external.

And if so, how would that affect acceleration?

A Ghost-class ship can certainly be carried by an LD. It just won't have hyper capabilities.

First: A Ghost class ship IS hyper capable and might be the smallest hyper capable spider drive ship, the freighter was only used to sneak them into the system.

Second: If enemies are able to find and disable an specific LD, how do you expect a Ghost moving away from that location (assuming it was not also damaged) to be unnoticed?

Third: Won't that take up considerable space that could better be used for weapons?

penny wrote:We speculated on smaller hyper capable ships in-between Ghosts and LDs. An LD is a fairly large vessel, the size of a fort. Is it possible to bolt the smallest hyper capable ship on to an LD for an emergency getaway? The captain -- and in the MAN a captain might be in short supply -- does not have to go down with the ship. For the GA the smallest hyper capable ship would be a frigate, right? How much larger than a LAC is a frigate? Is it feasible for the LD to carry a hyper capable spider drive ship? Of course, as long as it does not eat into its weaponry. Internal or external.

And if so, how would that affect acceleration?

A Ghost-class ship can certainly be carried by an LD. It just won't have hyper capabilities.

Could a smaller ship be bolted to an LD? Almost assuredly - though it doesn't actually need to be bolted on to hyper out with the LD. For that it just needs to be within a few km of the LD (should the hyper generator be pushed to extend its transition field (like the Peep ships did on HotQ).
And we've seen a freighter, the Hali Sowle, not a large or modern ship as freighters go - hyper in carrying a pair of frigates who'd tractored on.

Though a small hyper ship isn't going to be much better at escaping than the LD itself it. The one advantage I can see for the little ship is that (unless the Streak drive works wildly differently that normal hyper generators) the generator cycle time scales with ship tonnage 30s for a dispatch boat up to 240s for an SD, and presumably proportionately longer for an LD - and that's from as ready as the generator can be before actually hitting 'go'.
But assuming it's also a spider drive the smaller ship will have no better acceleration than the LD (both limited by crew). The hyper limit applies equally to both - so neither can jump out if the pair is operating inside the hyper limit.
So it's a lot of extra to haul around for something that's very unlikely to be of use.

The only frigate I think we know the specs on is the SCN's Gryf-class [53,000 tons, 324x38x22m].
Very roughly 3x the length and 5x the mass of a old-style LAC like the Highlander-class [11,250 tons, 138x23x21m] or 4.5x the length and 2.5x the mass of a Shrike [20,250 tons, 71x20x20m].

As another comparison that puts the Gryf at about 15k tons heavier, and 30m longer, that a courier [specifically the RHN's Facteur-class - which is just about the smallest possible hyper-capable starship] -- which fits with the books saying that (historically) a frigate fell about halfway between the size of a dispatch boat (courier) and a destroyer.



As tlb already pointed out the "roughly frigate-sized Ghost-class scout ships" do mount hyper generators. We're explicitly told that Ghosts were used to test out the tractor-linked ring hyper-insertion technique that the Shark's later used during OB. Ghosts couldn't have done that without hyper generator of their own.


And as for how "bolting" a small ship to an LD might affect it's acceleration? Without a compensator the small ship is feeling all the acceleration the LD is subject to -- which means the connection method, and the structural members of each ship that it ultimately connects to, have to be able to take the force of that mass times the ships' acceleration. That could very well limit their joint acceleration.
But if that connection is strong enough to take the forces then I don't think it'd have any impact on the LD's accel. Its drive is powerful enough that the acceleration limit on the likely 10+ mton ships is what the crew can handle after the grav-plates do what they can to mitigate it. So it should have the brute force to move an extra 50k tons (another 1/2 a percent of its tonnage) to that same crew imposed limit.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:We speculated on smaller hyper capable ships in-between Ghosts and LDs. An LD is a fairly large vessel, the size of a fort. Is it possible to bolt the smallest hyper capable ship on to an LD for an emergency getaway? The captain -- and in the MAN a captain might be in short supply -- does not have to go down with the ship. For the GA the smallest hyper capable ship would be a frigate, right? How much larger than a LAC is a frigate? Is it feasible for the LD to carry a hyper capable spider drive ship? Of course, as long as it does not eat into its weaponry. Internal or external.

And if so, how would that affect acceleration?

A Ghost-class ship can certainly be carried by an LD. It just won't have hyper capabilities.

Could a smaller ship be bolted to an LD? Almost assuredly - though it doesn't actually need to be bolted on to hyper out with the LD. For that it just needs to be within a few km of the LD (should the hyper generator be pushed to extend its transition field (like the Peep ships did on HotQ).
And we've seen a freighter, the Hali Sowle, not a large or modern ship as freighters go - hyper in carrying a pair of frigates who'd tractored on.

Though a small hyper ship isn't going to be much better at escaping than the LD itself it. The one advantage I can see for the little ship is that (unless the Streak drive works wildly differently that normal hyper generators) the generator cycle time scales with ship tonnage 30s for a dispatch boat up to 240s for an SD, and presumably proportionately longer for an LD - and that's from as ready as the generator can be before actually hitting 'go'.
But assuming it's also a spider drive the smaller ship will have no better acceleration than the LD (both limited by crew). The hyper limit applies equally to both - so neither can jump out if the pair is operating inside the hyper limit.
So it's a lot of extra to haul around for something that's very unlikely to be of use.

The only frigate I think we know the specs on is the SCN's Gryf-class [53,000 tons, 324x38x22m].
Very roughly 3x the length and 5x the mass of a old-style LAC like the Highlander-class [11,250 tons, 138x23x21m] or 4.5x the length and 2.5x the mass of a Shrike [20,250 tons, 71x20x20m].

As another comparison that puts the Gryf at about 15k tons heavier, and 30m longer, that a courier [specifically the RHN's Facteur-class - which is just about the smallest possible hyper-capable starship] -- which fits with the books saying that (historically) a frigate fell about halfway between the size of a dispatch boat (courier) and a destroyer.



As tlb already pointed out the "roughly frigate-sized Ghost-class scout ships" do mount hyper generators. We're explicitly told that Ghosts were used to test out the tractor-linked ring hyper-insertion technique that the Shark's later used during OB. Ghosts couldn't have done that without hyper generator of their own.


And as for how "bolting" a small ship to an LD might affect it's acceleration? Without a compensator the small ship is feeling all the acceleration the LD is subject to -- which means the connection method, and the structural members of each ship that it ultimately connects to, have to be able to take the force of that mass times the ships' acceleration. That could very well limit their joint acceleration.
But if that connection is strong enough to take the forces then I don't think it'd have any impact on the LD's accel. Its drive is powerful enough that the acceleration limit on the likely 10+ mton ships is what the crew can handle after the grav-plates do what they can to mitigate it. So it should have the brute force to move an extra 50k tons (another 1/2 a percent of its tonnage) to that same crew imposed limit.

Not bolted on to hyper out with. But bolted on because of a lack of internal volume in which to permanently carry a hyper capable ship as an emergency escape. A Ghost-class ship isn't as small as a shuttle. I was thinking its volume is too significant to carry internally. But an LD wouldn't lose any internal volume to escape pods. I don't think an LD would have escape pods. I'm thinking about a contingency plan for a super stealthy warship. As an escape, an LD can launch a spider drive ship for all of the top brass. The remaining crew will die when the ship self destructs. I am also thinking about a situation where the LD is damaged from a long distance launch that was a lucky shot. If a 0/0 intercept is an hour or more away, then the LD has time to launch a shuttle, or something. If that something also has a spider drive, and is hyper capable, then all of the top brass, Captain, Admiral, tactical etc., can survive. The MA will not allow its crew to be taken prisoner. But I don't see why a contingency plan wouldn't be available to an LD. If the situation warrants it. A stealthy warship that has access to stealthy technology has a unusual tactical solution available for saving the captain. Something that isn't available to an impeller-driven navy. Anything launched from a GA ship can be seen and chased down.

penny wrote:Not bolted on to hyper out with. But bolted on because of a lack of internal volume in which to permanently carry a hyper capable ship as an emergency escape. A Ghost-class ship isn't as small as a shuttle. I was thinking its volume is too significant to carry internally. But an LD wouldn't lose any internal volume to escape pods. I don't think an LD would have escape pods. I'm thinking about a contingency plan for a super stealthy warship. As an escape, an LD can launch a spider drive ship for all of the top brass. The remaining crew will die when the ship self destructs. I am also thinking about a situation where the LD is damaged from a long distance launch that was a lucky shot. If a 0/0 intercept is an hour or more away, then the LD has time to launch a shuttle, or something. If that something also has a spider drive, and is hyper capable, then all of the top brass, Captain, Admiral, tactical etc., can survive. The MA will not allow its crew to be taken prisoner. But I don't see why a contingency plan wouldn't be available to an LD. If the situation warrants it. A stealthy warship that has access to stealthy technology has a unusual tactical solution available for saving the captain. Something that isn't available to an impeller-driven navy. Anything launched from a GA ship can be seen and chased down.

Oh, if that's all you want why bolt it to the LD and block firing and sensor arcs, complicate the stealth system, etc.

Just have an extra Ghost-class scout operating in close concert with the LD and, in the extremely unlikely scenario where the LD is disabled and you have time to evacuate, the Ghost could dock to grab the evacuees, or a shuttle could run them across.

The LDs are almost certainly going to operated in conjunction with the Ghosts anyway -- as the Ghosts were seemingly design to be the deep in-system scout that do find and nail down the targets and enable the terminal fire direction -- so its easy enough to order one to stay nearby if you want a nearby ship. (And if it's not bolted to the LD then it is less likely to get damaged by whatever disabled the LD and prevented it from retreating itself)

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:Not bolted on to hyper out with. But bolted on because of a lack of internal volume in which to permanently carry a hyper capable ship as an emergency escape. A Ghost-class ship isn't as small as a shuttle. I was thinking its volume is too significant to carry internally. But an LD wouldn't lose any internal volume to escape pods. I don't think an LD would have escape pods. I'm thinking about a contingency plan for a super stealthy warship. As an escape, an LD can launch a spider drive ship for all of the top brass. The remaining crew will die when the ship self destructs. I am also thinking about a situation where the LD is damaged from a long distance launch that was a lucky shot. If a 0/0 intercept is an hour or more away, then the LD has time to launch a shuttle, or something. If that something also has a spider drive, and is hyper capable, then all of the top brass, Captain, Admiral, tactical etc., can survive. The MA will not allow its crew to be taken prisoner. But I don't see why a contingency plan wouldn't be available to an LD. If the situation warrants it. A stealthy warship that has access to stealthy technology has a unusual tactical solution available for saving the captain. Something that isn't available to an impeller-driven navy. Anything launched from a GA ship can be seen and chased down.

Oh, if that's all you want why bolt it to the LD and block firing and sensor arcs, complicate the stealth system, etc.

Just have an extra Ghost-class scout operating in close concert with the LD and, in the extremely unlikely scenario where the LD is disabled and you have time to evacuate, the Ghost could dock to grab the evacuees, or a shuttle could run them across.

The LDs are almost certainly going to operated in conjunction with the Ghosts anyway -- as the Ghosts were seemingly design to be the deep in-system scout that do find and nail down the targets and enable the terminal fire direction -- so its easy enough to order one to stay nearby if you want a nearby ship. (And if it's not bolted to the LD then it is less likely to get damaged by whatever disabled the LD and prevented it from retreating itself)

Yes! That is a much better solution. It also allows a tactic I posited in another thread. If a Ghost ship is operating nearby and the GA has somewhat of some good luck with a spider drive detector, or simply something goes awry and the LD's location is somewhat compromised, then the Ghost can be the sacrificial lamb.

That begs a question. Will the spider drive detector, if developed, be able to distinguish spider drive signatures? Much like each impeller-drive has its own unique signature. It isn't possible to pass off the wedge of a CL for that of an SD.

penny wrote:That begs a question. Will the spider drive detector, if developed, be able to distinguish spider drive signatures? Much like each impeller-drive has its own unique signature. It isn't possible to pass off the wedge of a CL for that of an SD.

I expect the author to make it so, but we cannot be sure until it is developed and in use.

It is somewhat possible to dial back the strength of the wedge (I think), to make a heavy ship look lighter or a warship look like a merchant ship. But trying to pass a heavy warship as a light warship means that you have also dialed back the acceleration (which normally would be greater for the lighter ship).

penny wrote:That begs a question. Will the spider drive detector, if developed, be able to distinguish spider drive signatures? Much like each impeller-drive has its own unique signature. It isn't possible to pass off the wedge of a CL for that of an SD.

Actually I'd say rather that (unless people are playing ECM games) it isn't possible to mistake the wedge of a CL for that of an SD.

But when the CL is playing ECM games... well I'm pretty sure it can be possible, in the right circumstance, for it to pass its wedge off as that of a far larger SD. Certainly we've seen decoys (which are way smaller than CLs) generate the signature of an SD's drive. And I'm pretty sure a ship cna play game with ECM and engineering to augment its wedge's signature, like a decoy can, to look bigger than it is. (And we've seen Honor's SDs are 4th Yeltsin do the opposite; simulating having the wedges of BCs -- though they couldn't mimic quite how close BCs could have gotten)

But those kinds of games with wedge signature are easier to pull off when the ships involved (both those faking the signature and the ones they're pretending to be) are accelerating at well below their normal military accel. The extra signal produced at 80% of max thrust (or more) is just way harder to play signal modification games with than if it's meandering along at, say, 30% accel.

@ Jonathan_S, tlb,

A lot will depend on how practical a spider-detector will be. If it is barely a bit better than looking for a needle in a haystack -- or if it is saddled with other reasonable limitations that wouldn't completely render the spider-drives useless -- then the MAN will have similar tactical options as the GA available as well. Like launching drones or platforms as a decoy. Same as the GA. And of course, the MAN will attempt to hold the truth about their maximum accel close to their heart.

I just can't see start up time for the spider drive to be anywhere near what it is for wedges. But on the one hand the spider-drive does not require nearly as much power to start its engines. But on the other, its interaction with the alpha wall seems much less efficient. So who knows.

Anyway, it is weird that the warship can accelerate as fast as its missiles err torps??? I simply have to be wrong about that!!!

.

penny wrote:Anyway, it is weird that the warship can accelerate as fast as its missiles err torps??? I simply have to be wrong about that!!!

I do not know whether that is true, since the limit for a manned spider ship is set by the ability of the human body to withstand forces over what can be countered by gravity plates and I do not think that an unmanned missile would be as limited.

PS: Look BBS formatting is back for now.

penny wrote:If that something also has a spider drive, and is hyper capable, then all of the top brass, Captain, Admiral, tactical etc., can survive. The MA will not allow its crew to be taken prisoner. But I don't see why a contingency plan wouldn't be available to an LD.

That would mean the GAULs would need to start turning on the crew to clear the way out from the inner core. Otherwise, you have 7500 people who are not getting off the ship who would be in the way and any dozen of them might get weapons to oppose the leadership leaving. The mental control of navy personnel can't be that good (we know they don't have suicide nanites) especially when they realise their life is forfeit. Quite a lot of them would try to get off the ship aboard those evacuation shuttles.

Another problem is that once the brass leaves, what's to stop the "workers" from surrendering the ship with all its classified systems intact? They'd have a lot of time to disable the scuttling charges without the top brass around to stop them. The GAULs may barricade themselves inside engineering and the flag bridge with a large nuke, but the rest of the crew will try to get to them and the bombs.

No, you don't want to give the crew time to realise their life is forfeit, so you don't have time to mount an evacuation of the top brass. Said top brass must activate the self-destruct as early as possible.

Besides, aside from the GAULs, the senior officers are the most likely to have drunk the kool-aid, because they are aware of the atrocities being committed. Therefore, they're more likely to die for the cause than regular crewmembers.