?

tlb wrote:As far as the RMN knows, this hyper transition you mention was a sensor "ghost"; you only know it was not because you read the book. The defenders have no way of knowing where or when the transition was made and so have no way of knowing what acceleration profile the weapons took to get where they fired. You are correct that an initial reaction was a new drive system, but that can just be incredulity that their sensors failed to prevent the attack.

The RMN does not know for certain what transition that was, but in that same meeting, White Haven reported that they think they know what it is. Plus, remember that the Silver Cepheids were sent to investigate. There are two uncertainties: first, if there are multiple, long-range, unexplained hyperspace transitions near in time and from the same region of space. It's highly unlikely there was more than one datum in this set.

The second is whether this datum can be confidently said to be the one. We think they know what it was because of the Silver Cepheids' presence, but they have to assume that it wasn't and that the actual attack insertion was missed and was much further out, where the arrays would not pick them up.

But for that, Galton screws up: now they have a timeline for departure from that system, which puts an upper limit to how long they could have spent sub-light near Manticore. If the Manticore arrays don't miss anything for 2 light-months, then at 0.8c they couldn't have arrived less than 2.5 months from the attack date.

And I add again the Silver Bullets: when does the Galton data say they left? For that matter, where are the (fake) plans for them? We did hear that the Oyster Bay attack was planted in Galton, but we did not hear about the Silver Bullets. That was Benjamin Detweiler's knee-jerk reaction to Albrecht's death, not a pre-planned operation.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And I add again the Silver Bullets: when does the Galton data say they left? For that matter, where are the (fake) plans for them? We did hear that the Oyster Bay attack was planted in Galton, but we did not hear about the Silver Bullets. That was Benjamin Detweiler's knee-jerk reaction to Albrecht's death, not a pre-planned operation.

It is too soon to be asking what plans will be found in Galton.

You are wrong in saying "we did not hear about the Silver Bullets. That was Benjamin Detweiler's knee-jerk reaction to Albrecht's death, not a pre-planned operation". It was the bombs in the orbitals that was the response to Albrecht's death, the Silver Bullets were discussed at the time the Malign heard about Mycroft while Albrecht was still alive.

penny wrote:But we cannot compare the loiter time of a Silver Bullet which I assume is measured in weeks

Quite a few weeks
As I noted above Silver Bullets are designed around an almost 3 month loiter endurance -- 80 days.

This time I'll include the relevant text-ev

Uncompromising Honor wrote:“Dwell time projections?”
“That’s actually a little better than our original estimates. Given the size of the final platform, we were able to build in deployable solar panels and a trickle charger for the plasma capacitors. They’ll be far enough out to limit what the panels can scoop up, but they should have enough power to hold the accumulators’ charge for at least eighty days before they fall behind the leakage rate and the capacitors drop below minimum operating levels. The numbers for Beowulf suggest it’ll be closer to ninety or even a hundred days, but eighty’s a safe minimum estimate.” Daniel shrugged. “If the spider wasn’t such a power hog, those numbers would be a lot better.”

penny wrote:At any rate, the ability to loiter would be a by-product of increased maneuverability. Loitering saves energy and again reduces waste heat. You don't think the MA would look into loiter time for a stealthy missile? I think they'd be irresponsible not to.

At any rate, exactly why would the ability to loiter increase the size of the missile? I also fail to see why decelerating would require significant amounts of power. And again, loitering may have its sweet spots. Better to loiter in suburbia than in the middle of the ghetto. Or vice versa. LOL

Also, after loitering, getting a g-torp back up to speed shouldn't take that much energy, IMO. It is already a slow missile. Almost as slow as an LD. I imagine a g-torp reaches its max acceleration very early after launch, so a restart after loitering shouldn't require any significant power, nor would there be a rush to get back up to speed.

Where does it say that a G-torpedo is as slow as an LD? Why slow? The manned spider-drive ships is limited to the acceleration that can be absorbed by gravity plates, an unmanned missile would not have that limitation. But that talks about acceleration and NOT ultimate speed; the ultimate speed of both should only be limited by particle shielding (unless there is a limitation in manipulating the tractor beams, which we may have discussed before).

A missile does not shut down all operations when loitering; so there is still power consumption, which will require more capacitors if you want to loiter any appreciable amount of time (which increases size).

I would accept that loitering was part of the design requirements if the G-torpedo had something as simple as the solar panel to trickle charge the capacitors. Instead I believe that it was designed to get to the target, using whatever maneuvers were necessary (not including loitering), and blow the target and itself up (even if that meant surplus energy was wasted).

penny wrote:Also, after loitering, getting a g-torp back up to speed shouldn't take that much energy, IMO. It is already a slow missile. Almost as slow as an LD. I imagine a g-torp reaches its max acceleration very early after launch, so a restart after loitering shouldn't require any significant power, nor would there be a rush to get back up to speed.

It reaches it's max accel shortly after launch (it's capable of "few hundred gravities’ acceleration"). But it's so low an accel it'd spend a lot of time accelerating up to whatever max speed is used for an attack run.

And if you want it to slow down so it can loiter in a given area it has to spend exactly as long slowing down. Spend 2 hours working up to about 21,000 KPS and you'll need to spend another 2 hours to cancel out all that velocity it built up in the original acceleration.


So I partially agree with tlb. I don't think they'd have design a g-torp with enough extra energy to allow it to run its drive for over twice as long as a normal attack profile. They'd have given it some margin to allow the drive to be brought back up for maneuvering if making very long range shots, but we're likely talking 10-15% extra time.

However since the drive can freely restart, and incorporate ballistic segments in its flight profile - the smart "AI" onboard should give plenty of flexibility to let a captain allocate the limited energy budge in more interesting ways than a continuous powered shot from whatever their design range was.
(Trading off energy lost to capacitor leakage rate against lower peak velocities from running the drive less.

So they should be free to:
* use 90% of its run time to build up velocity, and save 10% for terminal maneuvering.
* Or drop that down to, say, 80 or 85% run time and use the extra power saved by 5%-10% less engine runtime to cover the leakage drain during a nice long ballistic coast (and still have 10% left for terminal maneuvering).
* Or if they wanted to use, say 35% of its run time, then have a nice long coast, another 35% to slow down to loiter speed, have the extra power saved by using 20% less runtime to cover leakage drain during coast & loitering (and still have 10% left for terminal maneuvering)

And you can partially compensate for the lower max velocity by simply sneaking closer so the g-torp doesn't have as far to go after launch.

Note: You might also want a slow terminal speed if you need to get at a target that could be protected by the wedge block-ships seen at Beowulf.
You need your velocity low enough that the g-torps few hundred gravities of accel can pick its way through the gaps between the wedges (which might require a couple of near 90 degree turns to dogleg your way through -- and if you've too much velocity you hit the back wedge before you can change your vector enough to miss it). So you might want the flexibility to slow down even if you're not planning to loiter before attacking.

With this kind of flexibility a loiter attack wouldn't need to be a specific design goal -- and might still be somewhat possible anyway.

tlb wrote:Where does it say that a G-torpedo is as slow as an LD? Why slow? The manned spider-drive ships is limited to the acceleration that can be absorbed by gravity plates, an unmanned missile would not have that limitation. But that talks about acceleration and NOT ultimate speed; the ultimate speed of both should only be limited by particle shielding (unless there is a limitation in manipulating the tractor beams, which we may have discussed before).

The relevant text is in Mission of Honor - but you're right, it's talking about acceleration; not speed.

Mission of Honor wrote:For all its size, it was also a slow weapon. It was simply impossible to fit a spider drive capable of more than a few hundred gravities’ acceleration into something small enough to make a practical weapon. As compensation, however, its drive had almost as much endurance as most of the galaxy’s recon drones, which gave it an impressive absolute range.

If we take "few hundred" to mean about 300, then it's about the same acceleration as the temporary max emergency power of an manned spider ship (310g - with the crew experiencing 9g). Mind you the ship's normal maximum combat accel is only 210g (crew experienced 4) and routine accel is only 150g (crew experienced 1)

penny wrote:Remember my constant preaching that the strategy and tactics that must be considered are completely different across the board for MA weapons? Then consider the life of a weapon as slow as a g-torp launched from the edge of the system. If the MA can take a snap shot of the system at the time of launch, I'd bet that snap shot will look nothing like what it did at the moment of launch. So a g-torp must have the inherent ability to perform extreme maneuvers to prevent collision or detection.

No doubt about that. I agree with you their useful life is probably a day or two (whether the graser firing time at the end reduces or not is besides the point and is moot). But there's a big difference between 48 hours and 80*24 hours: specifically, a 40x difference.

The quote above is that the spider is a power hog (it probably does "40 rods to the hogshead," which is how Grandpa Simpson likes it). We also know that there's a detectable power spike that happens when it's turned on, so the torpedo most likely must keep it on at all times to avoid the accidental detection if it were to power down. That means the loiter time cannot be meaningfully increased by just going ballistic or doing nothing.

The only thing that would improve that is if the MAlign finally crack the secret of the compact fusion bottles that the GA has.

At any rate, the ability to loiter would be a by-product of increased maneuverability. Loitering saves energy and again reduces waste heat. You don't think the MA would look into loiter time for a stealthy missile? I think they'd be irresponsible not to.

Yes, I think they would look into it.

That doesn't mean they succeeded in implementing it. The evidence says that they haven't. Or, put another way, compared to the 9-minute flight time of a standard MDM, 2 days of lifetime is actually a massive improvement.

Isn't there a thread currently trending about the various power modes of wedge based missiles? Why would the same notion not exist for MA missiles?

Wedge missiles have wedges, which allows them to access energy from hyperspace.

We've had this portion of the discussion.

Why did the G-torp run into the wedge of a tug? Where did that happen? Was it intentional suicide by the g-torp because of its drained power reserves, to prevent detection or due to a malfunction?

It didn't; it went through the opening of the wedge and it was all by accident.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:At any rate, the ability to loiter would be a by-product of increased maneuverability. Loitering saves energy and again reduces waste heat. You don't think the MA would look into loiter time for a stealthy missile? I think they'd be irresponsible not to.

At any rate, exactly why would the ability to loiter increase the size of the missile? I also fail to see why decelerating would require significant amounts of power. And again, loitering may have its sweet spots. Better to loiter in suburbia than in the middle of the ghetto. Or vice versa. LOL

Also, after loitering, getting a g-torp back up to speed shouldn't take that much energy, IMO. It is already a slow missile. Almost as slow as an LD. I imagine a g-torp reaches its max acceleration very early after launch, so a restart after loitering shouldn't require any significant power, nor would there be a rush to get back up to speed.

Where does it say that a G-torpedo is as slow as an LD? Why slow? The manned spider-drive ships is limited to the acceleration that can be absorbed by gravity plates, an unmanned missile would not have that limitation. But that talks about acceleration and NOT ultimate speed; the ultimate speed of both should only be limited by particle shielding (unless there is a limitation in manipulating the tractor beams, which we may have discussed before).

A missile does not shut down all operations when loitering; so there is still power consumption, which will require more capacitors if you want to loiter any appreciable amount of time (which increases size).

I would accept that loitering was part of the design requirements if the G-torpedo had something as simple as the solar panel to trickle charge the capacitors. Instead I believe that it was designed to get to the target, using whatever maneuvers were necessary (not including loitering), and blow the target and itself up (even if that meant surplus energy was wasted).

Look at the very last page of the 'SLN playing catch up with Manticoran Superiority' thread where I posted shock that it appears an LD can possibly shoot itself in the face. I'm with you, it shocks me too. You are absent from that discussion.

I have had a humorous thought in my head about the Ghost Rider drones for a very long time. When it is dropped off in a system to spy, I imagine it runs into a lot of emergency scenarios which makes it have to kick it into high gear. “Oh shit ... OH SHIT! ... OOOO SHIT!!!”

I imagine life is no different for any stealthy object. So, I don't imagine that any ability to slow down and stop would be any different than having to exercise emergency evasive maneuvers, which might come one after the other; which may take a g-torp way off of its intended flight profile causing a need to get back on track. And I may be mistaken, but I imagine emergency evasive maneuvers wound eat into the available power supply much quicker.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The quote above is that the spider is a power hog (it probably does "40 rods to the hogshead," which is how Grandpa Simpson likes it). We also know that there's a detectable power spike that happens when it's turned on, so the torpedo most likely must keep it on at all times to avoid the accidental detection if it were to power down. That means the loiter time cannot be meaningfully increased by just going ballistic or doing nothing.

A little more thought into this:

I don't think a torpedo can loiter or go ballistic at low velocities in the inner system and get close to targets this way. The spider activation is detectable and this was the concern in Oyster Bay.

But it could do that if it stayed, say, ten light-minutes away from targets and waiting for a juicy one to show up. Ten light-minutes at 300 gravities is a 3-hour speed run, so it might be acceptable. There's still the tactical problem of those slow weapons generating an interception solution against a target that is much faster than they are. Against a static target, I don't see the value in this tactic.

Instead, another possibility is to loiter outside the system: the attacking ship simply swims the torpedo out of its tube a light-hour away (orbit of Saturn) and leaves it there for a day. This is now a 7.5-hour attack run arriving at 0.26c.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:A little more thought into this:

I don't think a torpedo can loiter or go ballistic at low velocities in the inner system and get close to targets this way. The spider activation is detectable and this was the concern in Oyster Bay.

Now that I'm looking more closely at the numbers for the Oyster Bay attack I'm impressed by how they seem to line up.

They've got two different prongs of the attack, the Cataphract pods which are necessarily coming in ballistically, and the g-torps which seemingly are accelerating for at least the final hour of their approach.

The four data points we have are at some unspecified point

Mission of Honor wrote:Now the Mesan attack came sweeping in out of the darkness. The incoming weapons had extraordinarily low radar signatures, and they were coming in at barely 60,000 KPS.

Then

Mission of Honor wrote:The torpedoes had begun accelerating well before they or any of the missile pods accompanying them reached the range at which any transmission from the communications platforms the Ghost-class scout ships had emplaced could have reached them

Mission of Honor wrote:The torpedoes [...] Special caps fitted to protect their sensors from particle erosion and micrometeorites during their long ballistic run in to attack range were blown free while onboard artificial intelligences considered the updated targeting information and concluded that none of it required significant modification of their pre-launch instructions. Their targets were rather large, after all, and they’d already known exactly where to find them.

and finally

Mission of Honor wrote:At the instant it fired, the torpedo which struck the control section was moving at the next best thing to 70,000 KPS

If we assume the "few hundred gravities" is 300g - then it'd take 3100 seconds (nearly 52 minutes) to accelerate from 60,000 KPS (0.2c) of their long ballistic approach to nearly 70,000 KPS (0.23c) - and they'd be a bit over 14 million km further down-range than they'd have been without that acceleration. (For a total of about 200 million km over that 52ish minutes)
That seems plenty far away to avoid having the drive start-up detected; a bit over a light-minute.



We also know the Cataphract pods also came in ballistically; behind "other, specialized pods which carried nothing but low-powered particle screens and the power supplies to maintain them for the ballistic run in-system to their targets" -- so they had a pretty long flight at pretty high speed to need that extra particle shielding. (And it wouldn't surprise me if they were moving at about the same velocity as the torps)

Unfortunately we just don't have enough details on the specific cataphracts used at OB to work out precisely how the time-on-target sledgehammer blow was pulled off[1] -- meaning where the pods were relative to the torps prior to the latter's hour of acceleration. But I do suspect that they did NOT utilize the full 255 seconds of the missile's powered endurance -- that would have given automated defenses way too much warning time before the laser-heads and g-torps struck.



So, both halves of the attack had a long, fast, ballistic approach. The torps cleared their sensors and accelerated first, and at some point nearly an hour later the Cataphract pods must have started launching missiles.


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[1] The exact text we're given on the Cataphracts used at OB is "the pod-launched missiles of Oyster Bay were Cataphract-Cs, based on the capital-ship Trebucht, with much heavier and more powerful laserheads. The combined package had a powered range from rest of over sixteen million kilometers and a terminal velocity of better than .49 c."

The missiles used at Torch had, per the numbers Duckk provide way back when, a terminal velocity from rest of 0.24c and a powered range from rest of 16.57 million km.
Either the range of the OB Cataphracts is massively over sixteen million km; their drive endurance is way down to offset their vastly higher accel, or (unlike the range) the given terminal velocity is NOT from rest.

(It actually would work out pretty well if calculated with the base ballistic velocity of 60,000 KPS. But it's confusing, if not outright misleading, to switch from "from rest" to "in this engagement" in the middle of a sentence)[/size]