?

Jonathan_S wrote:Though HAE does include this tidbit

Echoes of Honor wrote:"Rifts" were volumes of hyper-space between gravity waves. They weren't uncommon; in fact, most of h-space was one huge rift, since grav waves tended to be quite narrow in interstellar terms. Unfortunately, the waves' crazy-quilt patterns meant most voyages required a starship to cross at least one.

Also, it belatedly occurs to me, that if grav waves were so frequent that a majority of rifts were walled off, that the first few centuries of hyper scouts (725 - 1200s PD), before the Warshaski detectors allowed grav waves to be seen and avoided, would have gone from risky to suicidal.

After all, the hyper scout Suffren that surveyed the Manticore system, before its sublight colony ship started off, made the 512 LY run from Earth to Manticore without encountering any grav waves (because, remember, it had no way to detect them at distance - and wouldn't have had the fuel/delta-v to go around them even if it could)
That's one hell of a big rift

This also implies that scout could not have encountered a rogue wave, which would mean that they are not common.

Obviously I need to rethink the metaphor; yet it would seem that the named Rifts might be in some way bounded, otherwise the region is just part of a greater whole. The Selker Rift also deserves a name because it contains a rogue wave. Perhaps they only occur in bounded Rifts?

tlb wrote:This also implies that scout could not have encountered a rogue wave, which would mean that they are not common.

Obviously I need to rethink the metaphor; yet it would seem that the named Rifts might be in some way bounded, otherwise the region is just part of a greater whole. The Selker Rift also deserves a name because it contains a rogue wave. Perhaps they only occur in bounded Rifts?

Human naming conventions can be weird.
For example there's no physical bound between Earth's oceans (some chokepoints, but sometimes barely even that, such as between the Indian and Pacific Oceans; or between the Southern Ocean and those oceans north of it) Yet they all have different names either for historic reasons or because it can be helpful to describe parts of a larger whole, even when there aren't predetermined segments within that whole.

But I suspect being partially bounded is enough to get a(n area of) rift named.
That is, what gets named are bits that lay in the middle of a shipping route, where you have to transit between two waves.
Nobody really cares that the rift might continues off to some sides for indefinitely long distances before encountering another grav wave, because effectively nobody travels off that way. They're looking for the shortest, or at least shortest safe, route between the two heavily traveled waves.
So that particular interruption in their route likely gets granted a name (if only so you don't have to say "The rift between waves A and B" when describing it )

But I expect the (often long) distances you have to travel between a given star system and its closest wave tend not to get named. They're just the beginning or end of your route, rather than an interruption within it.


But that's all just my speculation

Jonathan_S wrote:So, if the MAlign are going somewhere that's 6 months away for them, a normal warship could get there in under 9 months. That's an annoying difference, but never an insurmountable one.
[cut]
(Though of course greater distance, without inaccessibility, still means a larger area to search - and so may delay their discovery)

Both points do actually make a Plan C hidey-hole actually a feasible scenario. It isn't fool-proof, as you said: the 50% difference in travel time is annoying but not insurmountable. However, above a certain threshold, it does make things impractical. If the MAlign set up a colony 6 months travel away (~3600 light-years away), a regular Theta-band scout would need to be fuelled up for a 3-year voyage just to confirm that something is there.

If you knew the exact distance, then the search would indeed be an area. But given the imprecision in any data that the GA would likely to have, the greater distance actually means the search is a volume and grows with the cube of the distance, not the square.

penny wrote:If an exceptionally large and powerful grav wave exists in the higher bands, bands that are inaccessible to anyone but the MA, then how will the GA reach those relatedly extreme distances without benefit of the higher bands and much more powerful grav waves?

I agree: if the wave is especially large, then it blocks off a huge volume of space and thus make accessing impractical. But not impossible. Ships with Warshawskis and Warshawski sails can navigate powerful rogue waves like the Selker just fine. They have to go slowly, but they can get there. We have no information of waves being non-navigable at all, so even if the non-streak ships had to go at 0.1c local, they could get there.

What it does make is searching nearly impossible. If you don't already know where to look for, the volume of the search is big and the scouts are moving very slowly from target to target.

It also creates a tactical problem for any would-be attackers, because if the OpSec is breached and the enemy has advance notice of your fleet leaving, they can outrun the fleet to prepare defences, or counter-attack your home systems, or both.

Do also consider that even if the secret of the streak drive is obtained by the GA, they still may have to discover the reconfiguration of the sails and perhaps other tech and information that will take time.

Your argument was that the grav wave was not present or was much weaker in those bands. Meaning that anyone would a streak drive would have no trouble navigating region.

If you change your argument that the MAlign has better Warshawskis because of their R&D in the streak drive, then the situation changes a little, because the GA would need to develop the same off-shoot technological innovation and it may not be that obvious. But again not a lot, if it is just a minor evolutionary step. We have no evidence of the case, but I grant you it may simply not have been mentioned because it wasn't relevant at any point so far.

Inaccessibility because there is reasonably only one way in and one way out. An incomprehensible anomaly of malignant proportions only found in the MA's own updated version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

That is not the case. It is accessible, even if impractical. Not impossible.

penny wrote:Tlb suggested that he does not think the author will share anything new about grav waves or rogue grav waves. I will hesitate to board that bus because sooner or later the author will have to give some explanation as to why Darius has not been found. Did David ever give a reason why Galton was not found without the Alignment's own error in Operational Security? At any rate, inaccessible regions of space might solve that problem as well.

It would have eventually been found. You can't hide your entire civilisation in the EM bands, so a nearby neighbour with sufficient spare capital to invest in astronomy would notice you eventually once light from your system propagated there. David has not used this argument and I actually doubt he will, but I also doubt he'll fail it.

Do note that Galton is about 200 light-years away from Mannerheim and was founded just over 200 T-years ago. Those two numbers being close is not a coincidence: the colony couldn't have been much closer. I'm guessing Darius has no developed neighbours within 150 light-years either. Plus, Darius hasn't had much of a space industry for 150 of its 180 years of existence, so no one closer than about 20 light-years would have anything to note in the first place.

In fact, discovering Darius may be one of the things he's having add backstory for, because as we've discussed, there's no way the GA can find it unless the information comes from Darius itself (fifth column leaking information out, etc.)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I agree: if the wave is especially large, then it blocks off a huge volume of space and thus make accessing impractical. But not impossible. Ships with Warshawskis and Warshawski sails can navigate powerful rogue waves like the Selker just fine. They have to go slowly, but they can get there. We have no information of waves being non-navigable at all, so even if the non-streak ships had to go at 0.1c local, they could get there.

Um, that's not what the text said.
Ships go slow in the Rift (under impeller because they're not inside a wave) so they can avoid the lethal "rogue grav wave known as the Selker Shear". [HAE]

Honor Among Enemies wrote:the Selker Rift couldn't be avoided, and so ships moving between the Empire and Confederacy crossed it under impeller drive at extremely low velocities—on the order of .16 c—in order to be sure they could dodge if the Selker Shear suddenly appeared on their detectors. It meant they took over five days just to cross the Rift, but it also meant they made it alive.

That certainly sounds like ships, even at low velocities, cannot survive entering the Shear.

However, because rogue waves appear, disappear, and move around (though within a general zone that can be mapped out) it's possible to safely cross (at least some) rifts were they're known to occur by avoiding it and/or waiting for it to go away.

Jonathan_S wrote:Ships go slow in the Rift (under impeller because they're not inside a wave) so they can avoid the lethal "rogue grav wave known as the Selker Shear". [HAE]

Honor Among Enemies wrote:the Selker Rift couldn't be avoided, and so ships moving between the Empire and Confederacy crossed it under impeller drive at extremely low velocities—on the order of .16 c—in order to be sure they could dodge if the Selker Shear suddenly appeared on their detectors. It meant they took over five days just to cross the Rift, but it also meant they made it alive.

That certainly sounds like ships, even at low velocities, cannot survive entering the Shear.

Yes, you cannot enter a grav wave under impellers. You must transition to sails first and this applies to every single grav wave. The difference is that the Shear can appear unexpectedly, so ships must be slow enough to have a chance of detecting it and transitioning to sails.

So, actually, there's no problem going through the Shear or any grav wave: just make sure you're under sail power. So a huge grav wave does NOT block any volume, however powerful.

No, what you need is a huge rift with shears popping up all the time, all over the volume, so ships basically cannot remain in impeller drive for any usable meaning of time, but also cannot accelerate under sails because the shears aren't there for long enough.

That Darius is at the other end of the Felix wormhole gives it a great jump on not being run across IF it isn't relatively close to an inhabited planet that could pick up its EM emissions. There is one known -to us- exit from the network that includes Felix and that is the terminus over by Torch

At this point, there is nothing yet that creates a question about the Felix system as being involved in anything other than perhaps it is being used by the Mannerheim SDF (now part of the RF) for exercises. No "known" habitation in the Felix either on a planet or any space station. Also at this point, you can't use the scouting technique that was used to investigate the system that turned out to be Galton because that was looking at the System, not the space relative to it for activity/EM noise. The RMN Scouting group isn't going to be looking for ship traffic well outside the hyper limit of Felix even if it were somehow tasked to investigate the same way.

We also don't know where the two "Unknown" termini are located. They are on the map of Oct 2019 but that only gives the distance of Mannerheim from Felix (10 ly) and the distance of Darius from Felix (130 ly). One little challenge for the Alignment is that the map appears to show Felix as a junction, not just one terminus which has at least three other direct termini (the 3rd being The Twins which has two wormholes, one of which is the one leading to Torch. I say challenge because if/when the Felix wormhole is identified by the GA or some one else looking for the Alignment, and that entity ends up blockading the Felix wormhole, Darius is -perhaps- at least 140 ly from anywhere we have been told about and all of it's traffic will have to use hyperspace.

The GA, well at least RMN, knows enough about Streak Drive from Herlander and Firebrand that it reduces the normal travel time between systems. They may not know by how much but eventually that could end up getting plugged into looking at interesting shipping movements related to the Alignment and it's minions and so -again perhaps- give someone the idea that ships equipped with the SD are stopping at rondezvouse points to transfer material/people/information. That also extends the distance you have to consider when looking for possible shipping locations since it extends the range of the ships in a give time frame.

Brigade XO wrote:That Darius is at the other end of the Felix wormhole gives it a great jump on not being run across IF it isn't relatively close to an inhabited planet that could pick up its EM emissions. There is one known -to us- exit from the network that includes Felix and that is the terminus over by Torch

At this point, there is nothing yet that creates a question about the Felix system as being involved in anything other than perhaps it is being used by the Mannerheim SDF (now part of the RF) for exercises. No "known" habitation in the Felix either on a planet or any space station. Also at this point, you can't use the scouting technique that was used to investigate the system that turned out to be Galton because that was looking at the System, not the space relative to it for activity/EM noise. The RMN Scouting group isn't going to be looking for ship traffic well outside the hyper limit of Felix even if it were somehow tasked to investigate the same way.

We also don't know where the two "Unknown" termini are located. They are on the map of Oct 2019 but that only gives the distance of Mannerheim from Felix (10 ly) and the distance of Darius from Felix (130 ly). One little challenge for the Alignment is that the map appears to show Felix as a junction, not just one terminus which has at least three other direct termini (the 3rd being The Twins which has two wormholes, one of which is the one leading to Torch. I say challenge because if/when the Felix wormhole is identified by the GA or some one else looking for the Alignment, and that entity ends up blockading the Felix wormhole, Darius is -perhaps- at least 140 ly from anywhere we have been told about and all of it's traffic will have to use hyperspace.

The GA, well at least RMN, knows enough about Streak Drive from Herlander and Firebrand that it reduces the normal travel time between systems. They may not know by how much but eventually that could end up getting plugged into looking at interesting shipping movements related to the Alignment and it's minions and so -again perhaps- give someone the idea that ships equipped with the SD are stopping at rondezvouse points to transfer material/people/information. That also extends the distance you have to consider when looking for possible shipping locations since it extends the range of the ships in a give time frame.

Even if Darius is found, it possibly has another layer of security - legality. All that is needed is Darius need to claim that it is a secret colony of.... another member of the Renaissance Factor. That's right, they are a secret colony of a separate completely legal star nation (say, the Maxwell Association) that has nothing to do with those big bad nasty Mesans. And when someone looks, sure enough, there exists at the Maxwell Association a paper trail of the Secret colony going back 200 years along with plenty of Government officials which will back it up.

Nothing to see here - everything is totally normal - move along....

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Ships go slow in the Rift (under impeller because they're not inside a wave) so they can avoid the lethal "rogue grav wave known as the Selker Shear". [HAE]

Honor Among Enemies wrote:the Selker Rift couldn't be avoided, and so ships moving between the Empire and Confederacy crossed it under impeller drive at extremely low velocities—on the order of .16 c—in order to be sure they could dodge if the Selker Shear suddenly appeared on their detectors. It meant they took over five days just to cross the Rift, but it also meant they made it alive.

Jonathan_S wrote:That certainly sounds like ships, even at low velocities, cannot survive entering the Shear.

Yes, you cannot enter a grav wave under impellers. You must transition to sails first and this applies to every single grav wave. The difference is that the Shear can appear unexpectedly, so ships must be slow enough to have a chance of detecting it and transitioning to sails.

So, actually, there's no problem going through the Shear or any grav wave: just make sure you're under sail power. So a huge grav wave does NOT block any volume, however powerful.

No, what you need is a huge rift with shears popping up all the time, all over the volume, so ships basically cannot remain in impeller drive for any usable meaning of time, but also cannot accelerate under sails because the shears aren't there for long enough.

That's certainly not the way I'd understood rogue waves -- though I admit we've very little text ev.

However the quote I'd included specifically says ships stay slow so they can dodge if the the Shear appears -- to me that is saying they're avoiding it; not rigging sails to gently enter it.

I think that word supports my belief that ships, even with sails, can't survive a rogue wave.