Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

Relax wrote:TLB, Thinksmarkedly et al

Well, I do know we can easily see small planets and their EMS signature from 5 Light Years away. Such as: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubbl ... i-a-and-b/

Now is that 50 Light years? No.
DO I know personally enough about this topic to say yes/no? No.

As for Cosmic Dust: I was under the impression from an amateur astronomer I talk to fairly regularly and have gone star gazing occasionally with that anything within ~1000 LY is not a problem due to dust. So definiton of "not a problem" is ...well shall we say clouded in opaque dust cloud.

Finding the star is easy, though it gets progressively more difficult to find dwarf stars as the distance goes up. Which is also why they're called "dwarfs" in the first place: we couldn't see the majority of them, so we tended to think they were the minority. It turns out that only about 0.12% of all stars are not dwarfs.

Finding that a planet or planets are orbiting the star seems to be easy too. We have several methods for doing that and they aren't very expensive. Local astronomers may amuse themselves in researching the outwards directions of their settlement and submitting papers to the Galactic community.

Finding electromagnetic emissions from such planets is tricky. Because they attenuate quite quickly, unless it's an intentional beacon or very, very loud, you're not going to hear the transmissions from a civilisation over 100 light-years away. It is easier to search for other signs of technology, such as Dyson Spheres.

Of course while reading Barnhams compendium, when making a more realistic uh reply: I remember Barnard 68, which is a dust cloud 125pc away(uh, ~3.x LY/pc) so ~375LY away. Can't see a SINGLe star behind it optically. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ard_68.jpg Of course Bernard 68 is a small dust object. So, seeing around it from a different angle would be ~trivial. Or just use Infrared and we can see through it: https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/astro ... smic-dust/ Our neighborhood in HV would be contained ENTIRELY within the inner ring of THIS picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way ... secs_(2022).png That is not much dust obscured potential regions to hide in.

Good point. Darius doesn't have to be inside of a dust cloud. It just needs to be behind one compared to the rest of the settled Galaxy. There are nebulae aplenty to obscure the line of sight.

IF you really want to blow your mind(modern finds using much better telescopes than we used to have), most spiral galaxies have perpendicular "hoop" rings to their major plane of their spiral spin direction. These hoops can be upwards of 2Million light years long on their axis, though most are MUCH MUCH smaller. For all we know Sol, could be at the base of such a perpendicular arm looping upwards of 200,000LY or more and attaching back down on the other side of the galaxy. Think HALO(ring world) except in stars perpendicular to plane of galaxy. There are so many Sci Fi Stories I could think about on this perpendicular arm and their lack of interaction with rest of the galaxy where vast majority of aliens are etc.

We know our galactic vector fairly well and we know we are roughly on the plane of the Galaxy and we don't have anywhere near the perpendicular velocity to leave it. We do oscillate up and down the plane, that's all.

With so many "belter" communities in the HV living OFF planet and IN space, one would think that with FAR superior viewing of the stars than anywhere on a planet that amateur SKY viewing in the HV future would be a near EVERYDAY occupation with forums dedicated to best planetary shot of nearby star contest of the week or some such continuously happening.

We have not heard of many "belter" communities in the HV. The fact that the first thing they do in a system is go down to the planet and promptly lose their space capability indicates so. In my opinion, that's stupid but I have to suspend disbelief here. One would expect that the first thing someone does in a new star system would be to set up orbital industries to replicate your current level of technology, before going down the gravity well.

We've had this discussion before (when penny was still cthia) and had an argument about whether people would want to "get over it right now" after a years- or centuries-long voyage.

As for collecting the information, Put up a small prize pool money and that will take care of itself. The amateurs will already be doing it and will jump at opportunity to make a little $$ for bragging rights.

Lots of false positives. And, as I said, true positives of real colonies no one knew was there, but aren't Darius.

If NOTHING else, this would eliminate vast swathes of space you do not have to scout for potential hidden bases. Small bases you don't care about. Its those monster 100km ++++ shipyards glowing into space with giant fusion reactor signatures glowing in the asteroid belts and refineries closer in that no one can hide. Not the minor Hole in the Wall's leading to Galton.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It might reduce the likelihood that the base is in that region, but it cannot be eliminated.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Relax wrote:TLB, Thinksmarkedly et al

Well, I do know we can easily see small planets and their EMS signature from 5 Light Years away. Such as: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubbl ... i-a-and-b/

Now is that 50 Light years? No.
DO I know personally enough about this topic to say yes/no? No.

As for Cosmic Dust: I was under the impression from an amateur astronomer I talk to fairly regularly and have gone star gazing occasionally with that anything within ~1000 LY is not a problem due to dust. So definiton of "not a problem" is ...well shall we say clouded in opaque dust cloud.

Finding the star is easy, though it gets progressively more difficult to find dwarf stars as the distance goes up. Which is also why they're called "dwarfs" in the first place: we couldn't see the majority of them, so we tended to think they were the minority. It turns out that only about 0.12% of all stars are not dwarfs.

Finding that a planet or planets are orbiting the star seems to be easy too. We have several methods for doing that and they aren't very expensive. Local astronomers may amuse themselves in researching the outwards directions of their settlement and submitting papers to the Galactic community.

Finding electromagnetic emissions from such planets is tricky. Because they attenuate quite quickly, unless it's an intentional beacon or very, very loud, you're not going to hear the transmissions from a civilisation over 100 light-years away. It is easier to search for other signs of technology, such as Dyson Spheres.

Of course while reading Barnhams compendium, when making a more realistic uh reply: I remember Barnard 68, which is a dust cloud 125pc away(uh, ~3.x LY/pc) so ~375LY away. Can't see a SINGLe star behind it optically. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ard_68.jpg Of course Bernard 68 is a small dust object. So, seeing around it from a different angle would be ~trivial. Or just use Infrared and we can see through it: https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/astro ... smic-dust/ Our neighborhood in HV would be contained ENTIRELY within the inner ring of THIS picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way ... secs_(2022).png That is not much dust obscured potential regions to hide in.

Good point. Darius doesn't have to be inside of a dust cloud. It just needs to be behind one compared to the rest of the settled Galaxy. There are nebulae aplenty to obscure the line of sight.

IF you really want to blow your mind(modern finds using much better telescopes than we used to have), most spiral galaxies have perpendicular "hoop" rings to their major plane of their spiral spin direction. These hoops can be upwards of 2Million light years long on their axis, though most are MUCH MUCH smaller. For all we know Sol, could be at the base of such a perpendicular arm looping upwards of 200,000LY or more and attaching back down on the other side of the galaxy. Think HALO(ring world) except in stars perpendicular to plane of galaxy. There are so many Sci Fi Stories I could think about on this perpendicular arm and their lack of interaction with rest of the galaxy where vast majority of aliens are etc.

We know our galactic vector fairly well and we know we are roughly on the plane of the Galaxy and we don't have anywhere near the perpendicular velocity to leave it. We do oscillate up and down the plane, that's all.

With so many "belter" communities in the HV living OFF planet and IN space, one would think that with FAR superior viewing of the stars than anywhere on a planet that amateur SKY viewing in the HV future would be a near EVERYDAY occupation with forums dedicated to best planetary shot of nearby star contest of the week or some such continuously happening.

We have not heard of many "belter" communities in the HV. The fact that the first thing they do in a system is go down to the planet and promptly lose their space capability indicates so. In my opinion, that's stupid but I have to suspend disbelief here. One would expect that the first thing someone does in a new star system would be to set up orbital industries to replicate your current level of technology, before going down the gravity well.

We've had this discussion before (when penny was still cthia) and had an argument about whether people would want to "get over it right now" after a years- or centuries-long voyage.

As for collecting the information, Put up a small prize pool money and that will take care of itself. The amateurs will already be doing it and will jump at opportunity to make a little $$ for bragging rights.

Lots of false positives. And, as I said, true positives of real colonies no one knew was there, but aren't Darius.

If NOTHING else, this would eliminate vast swathes of space you do not have to scout for potential hidden bases. Small bases you don't care about. Its those monster 100km ++++ shipyards glowing into space with giant fusion reactor signatures glowing in the asteroid belts and refineries closer in that no one can hide. Not the minor Hole in the Wall's leading to Galton.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It might reduce the likelihood that the base is in that region, but it cannot be eliminated.

Awhile back, David said that for every mark on the "official" Honorverse in-universe map, there are 50 or more human habitations not part of the "official" record of humanity. Lost Colonies, Abandoned colonies, pirate bases, mining stations, cargo transfer stations, slaver outposts, hidden colonies, small homesteads, middle of no-where amusement parks, etc, etc.

Not to mention that warships routinely exercise in the systems around their local systems to make sure pirates are not in the area, that navigation records are kept up, and no ships have accidently become stranded in the region.

Just because you see human signals and constructs where you don't expect them, does not a Mesan under your bed make.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:I asked awhile ago how long it takes for the MAN to bring up its Spider drive? … Then go to emergency acceleration and evasive maneuvers?

Let's say it's instantaneous, the folding of the Warshawski sails is also instantaneous, and can be achieved inside the emergence lane. At emergency acceleration of 250 gravities, a spider ship needs 90 seconds to clear the 10,000 km lane and 8.2 minutes to get out of the wormhole's hyperlimit.

Given that the ship was not stealthy when it transited, with a pair of 200-km wide shining Warshawski sails, it was locked on. Its position is very well known and is being observed, regardless of stealth. There's no way it will go unnoticed.

If the MAN does a mass transit with impeller-driven warships, say, insignificant stolen or acquired SLN warships leading the formation, will any trailing MAN ships have enough time to “cloak” then evade?

The question is whether they'll be lost in the noise. So this is a question of competency of the defenders, not of MAN's stealth. If the defenders are competent and can track several dozen starships transiting, they will not miss the spider-driven ones. They will also go to alert and sweep the entire area as soon as hostiles are detected, if they are competent.

So I think this proposition is also a suicide mission for the spider ships, not just the impeller ones.

Question. We all know that ships can be towed through hyper. Can a ship be towed through a WH? Also, I assume ships are normally towed, trailing behind the towing ship. Can a ship be “towed ahead.” Wait… what? Can powerful enough presser beams press smaller ships into a WH ahead of itself?

Good question. It starts with the same question as towing through a grav wave. So I think the answer is "no, they can't be towed" because the position of the Warshawski sails would be all wrong. Maybe if the towed ship is projecting its own sails it would survive, but then there's no stealth.

But wait, it gets worse: unlike a grav wave, a WH transit requires use of the hypergenerator and the volume of the towing ship will not include the towed one. So you need the towed ship to also use its own hypergenerator.

What would be the point of towing a ship that has a working hypergenerator and Warshawski sails?

The best you could do is carry them inside a freighter, such as how the Ghosts were carried. But then the one thing you wouldn't do is open your cargo doors underneath everyone's prying eyes.

Question 2. The author said no unmanned warships. But what is the size of the smallest skeleton crew? A skeleton crew of sacrificial lambs.

Ships seem to need at least a few dozen people to operate. That would be the case for an MAN frigate-sized ship with sails and hypergenerator.

In my other post that should have been ships stacked so that their sails hide an LD or two. How can sensors see through stacked sails? Sails are simply reconfigured wedges.


For the sole purpose of being a shield and a distraction when transiting a WH, it should be possible to whittle a skeleton crew down much further. If a navy has the time to assemble together for a mass transit, that implies they have control of that end; for whatever the many manners of “control” means for an entity who has access to nanite warfare. So, skeleton crews needed simply for the purpose of maneuvering a formation of blocking ships (front and sides) through a WH should be very small. I never anticipated a crew as small as one, like tlb. But he might have a point. A transit is a maximum of minutes tops. Fractions of a second for the actual transit. The reactor and anything else that needs attending should be okay for minutes.

We do not know what manner of voodoo spider drive ships take when transiting. They may share the same limitations as needing sails to transit, but they may be able to exist for shorter periods of time in transit lanes and emergence lanes. Probably not, but we can't write it in stone.

penny wrote:In my other post that should have been ships stacked so that their sails hide an LD or two. How can sensors see through stacked sails? Sails are simply reconfigured wedges.

Indeed and you can't see through them. But they're also in a very particular orientation with relation to the ship and the ship to the transit vector. Therefore, you can't hide anything from certain angles. All the defenders need to do is have sufficiently many angles to see that more ships transited.

Besides, you can't see through a wedge, but you can see it in gravitic sensors. So it stands to reason sails will be seen too. I find it hard that anyone will miss the sail the size of one needed for an LD.

Then there's the fact that the transit lane will be a very dangerous place to be once the sacrificial ships start exploding. There will be high-speed debris flying in all directions. Hopefully none of it is dangerous to the LD's armour, but it might suffice to dent and thus compromise the stealth paint. Even if none of this is a problem, the LD needs to survive the hundreds of graser beams intersecting the emergence lane without taking a single shot, intentional or not. The odds may be on its side (though I doubt it), but no planner should count on luck.

For the sole purpose of being a shield and a distraction when transiting a WH, it should be possible to whittle a skeleton crew down much further. If a navy has the time to assemble together for a mass transit, that implies they have control of that end; for whatever the many manners of “control” means for an entity who has access to nanite warfare. So, skeleton crews needed simply for the purpose of maneuvering a formation of blocking ships (front and sides) through a WH should be very small. I never anticipated a crew as small as one, like tlb. But he might have a point. A transit is a maximum of minutes tops. Fractions of a second for the actual transit. The reactor and anything else that needs attending should be okay for minutes.

Indeed, that's an interesting extra point. If we're talking about a terminus that the hither defenders know to be held by hostiles, they will not hesitate to fire on anything that transits and doesn't come blaring an IFF from the spy courier. The emergence lane will be surrounded by missile pods and recon drones. There's no chance of something stealthily transiting and surviving to exit the wormhole.

And if the defenders don't know the other terminus has been taken, they should know quickly for any wormhole with non-negligible traffic. There's no way anyone could overwhelm all the defenders in any of the termini of the MWHJ or friendly ones without a warning going out, and even if so the time to assemble a mass transit would be longer than the standard "ping-pong" through the terminus to see if everything is ok.

That leaves taking over an entirely insignificant wormhole. But if that's the case, then who's shooting from the other side that you needed dozens of sacrificial ships to distract from?

We do not know what manner of voodoo spider drive ships take when transiting. They may share the same limitations as needing sails to transit, but they may be able to exist for shorter periods of time in transit lanes and emergence lanes. Probably not, but we can't write it in stone.

Right, it's possible that the spider itself functions as a sail and therefore the ships don't need an impeller ring for the sails. But that doesn't mean this configuration of the spider is stealthy: given just how much energy the sails are putting out and absorbing from the eddies around the wormhole, it's entirely plausible the spider would be visible.

Even if it's stealthy, then we have the transit itself. It's never come up if the arrival in a wormhole is an energetic event. We do know that the band receiving a ship through a hyper translation sees a lot of energy dissipating and a wormhole transit uses the same hyper generator. So there's another possibility here that there's a big flash of energy for a ship arriving. Then this ship would need to count on this being such an unexpected occurrence that the defenders choose to investigate system faults instead of deploying recon drones.

Even if all of this is stealthy, we go back to the section above of just where this is happening. If there's a significant presence on this side to warrant such a trick, then it's either a junction with a lot of traffic and someone will notice the gap in transits or it's a wormhole that the defenders know to be held by a hostile. Either way, the defenders will be on alert. Therefore, this scenario is neither the MWHJ, nor Felix, nor Erewhon.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But wait, it gets worse: unlike a grav wave, a WH transit requires use of the hypergenerator and the volume of the towing ship will not include the towed one. So you need the towed ship to also use its own hypergenerator.

I considered this but dismissed it so left it out of my post. We know that ships can push their hyper generator range out significantly beyond themselves (see Thunder of God towing Masadan LACs) and there was no indication that the hyper translation broke the tow and forced it to be reestablished.

And we know that one emergency evacuation method, when an RMN fleet is under fire and can't (or lacks time to) call its CLACs back to rendezvous, is for the LACs to tractor themselves to the SD(P)s right before those hyper out. (Taking them to catch up with the CLAC)
With dozens of LACs hanging off each SD(P) I'd think it'd be a bit of disaster if those tractor had to be reestablished after the hyper translation. (Of course IIRC this is said only to work when the system isn't in a grav wave; further indicating --now that I think about it-- that you can't tow things there unless they have at least one sail of their own)


So since I think from those that a tow can survive a hyper translation I figured that it could probably also survive a wormhole translation (assuming you'd tucked in towed ship in close enough to be within your maximum hyper generator bubble -- something that should be possible even when both ships have sails up as, unlike a wedge, sails don't stick ahead or astern of the ship so shouldn't interfere with even a close tow)

penny wrote:In my other post that should have been ships stacked so that their sails hide an LD or two. How can sensors see through stacked sails? Sails are simply reconfigured wedges.

I'm trying to visualize how that would work.

The ships arriving through the wormhole need to be pointed down the emergence lane. That necessarily puts their sails perpendicular to it. Meaning they are nearly invisible from the top, bottom or sides because they're so thin -- even on a dinky little 400m long destroyer most of its length is exposed to fire from those angles because the sails really only block fire (or view) from ahead or astern arc.

And that's why the inward facing defenses of a wormhole are concentrated along the length of its emergence lanes -- rather than off the end of it. That way they can fire into the exposed and vulnerable flanks of any hostile ship that transited; where its sails can't protect it (which means they also can't block the view past it, across the lane)


I can easily see how you could position ships to block observers that were ahead of them from seeing something behind those ships. And I assume the wormhole itself blocks observation from behind them. But from the sides, where all the defenses are? A sail blocks basically nothing so I can't visualize how it could hide another ship.

Jonathan_S wrote:I considered this but dismissed it so left it out of my post. We know that ships can push their hyper generator range out significantly beyond themselves (see Thunder of God towing Masadan LACs) and there was no indication that the hyper translation broke the tow and forced it to be reestablished.

And we know that one emergency evacuation method, when an RMN fleet is under fire and can't (or lacks time to) call its CLACs back to rendezvous, is for the LACs to tractor themselves to the SD(P)s right before those hyper out. (Taking them to catch up with the CLAC)
With dozens of LACs hanging off each SD(P) I'd think it'd be a bit of disaster if those tractor had to be reestablished after the hyper translation. (Of course IIRC this is said only to work when the system isn't in a grav wave; further indicating --now that I think about it-- that you can't tow things there unless they have at least one sail of their own)


So since I think from those that a tow can survive a hyper translation I figured that it could probably also survive a wormhole translation (assuming you'd tucked in towed ship in close enough to be within your maximum hyper generator bubble -- something that should be possible even when both ships have sails up as, unlike a wedge, sails don't stick ahead or astern of the ship so shouldn't interfere with even a close tow)

Indeed, but in both cases, those are LACs. The hypergenerator field surrounds the ship at a distance of a few metres. If I'm generous, a hundred or two. There's no way you can fit a huge warship in that, not even a Shark, much less a Leonard Detweiler.

Even if you did, you've still got this ship attached to the glaring beacon that is the sacrificial ship, which will be receiving a graser beam in the next few seconds after the transition. The LD cannot get sufficiently far away.

Moreover, if you towed side-by-side instead head-to-toe, the towing ship would need to be longer than the towed ship itself, otherwise its Warshawski sails will neatly cleave the towed ship. Either way, we're not talking any more about surplus SL stuff that the MAN had otherwise no use for. We're talking about dedicated platforms built-for-purpose. That's expensive, probably requires a large crew, and will not be mistaken when it shows up on the defenders' scanners.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I considered this but dismissed it so left it out of my post. We know that ships can push their hyper generator range out significantly beyond themselves (see Thunder of God towing Masadan LACs) and there was no indication that the hyper translation broke the tow and forced it to be reestablished.

And we know that one emergency evacuation method, when an RMN fleet is under fire and can't (or lacks time to) call its CLACs back to rendezvous, is for the LACs to tractor themselves to the SD(P)s right before those hyper out. (Taking them to catch up with the CLAC)
With dozens of LACs hanging off each SD(P) I'd think it'd be a bit of disaster if those tractor had to be reestablished after the hyper translation. (Of course IIRC this is said only to work when the system isn't in a grav wave; further indicating --now that I think about it-- that you can't tow things there unless they have at least one sail of their own)


So since I think from those that a tow can survive a hyper translation I figured that it could probably also survive a wormhole translation (assuming you'd tucked in towed ship in close enough to be within your maximum hyper generator bubble -- something that should be possible even when both ships have sails up as, unlike a wedge, sails don't stick ahead or astern of the ship so shouldn't interfere with even a close tow)

Indeed, but in both cases, those are LACs. The hypergenerator field surrounds the ship at a distance of a few metres. If I'm generous, a hundred or two. There's no way you can fit a huge warship in that, not even a Shark, much less a Leonard Detweiler.

Your generous few hundred meters is short by an order of magnitude

Honor of the Queen wrote:both Thunder and Principality had far more powerful hyper generators than any Masadan starship. In fact, their generators were powerful enough to extend their translation fields over six kilometers beyond their own hulls if he redlined them

Now 6km isn't enough to clear the wedge if you were towing under impellers - so might be dicey trying to tow something the size of an LD with its nose within 5 km of the ship.

But, as I'd noted, sails don't extend ahead or behind the ship; so there's not much that would seem to prevent you from tractoring a LD a couple km behind you; plenty close enough to be captured within a redlined hyper generator's zone.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Even if you did, you've still got this ship attached to the glaring beacon that is the sacrificial ship, which will be receiving a graser beam in the next few seconds after the transition. The LD cannot get sufficiently far away.

Moreover, if you towed side-by-side instead head-to-toe, the towing ship would need to be longer than the towed ship itself, otherwise its Warshawski sails will neatly cleave the towed ship. Either way, we're not talking any more about surplus SL stuff that the MAN had otherwise no use for. We're talking about dedicated platforms built-for-purpose. That's expensive, probably requires a large crew, and will not be mistaken when it shows up on the defenders' scanners.

These however are fair points -- you'd be tucked in very close to a multi-hundred KM diameter glowing "here I am" beacon.

And, wow, I hadn't even considered an abreast tow. But you're absolutely right, if that was attempted the towed ship would have to be shorter than the distance between the alpha rings of the towing ship (so less than 70% her length - as "The nodes which generated the impeller wedge had to be very specifically located relative to the dimensions of a ship. In general, they had to lie within twelve to fifteen percent of the extreme ends of the vessel" [SVW]).

So, to give some safety margin an SD likely wouldn't want to tow anything along side that exceeded 750 meters (though its sails should be about 950m apart). That's big enough it could tow a cruiser or even a BC there (though not a BC(L)); but it's unlikely that an LD is short enough (even with its weird hull geometry) to fit next to an SD under sail.
(And a BC likely wouldn't want to try anything larger than a LAC there - as with similar safety margins it'd only fit about 300m of ship; to long for even a destroyer to fit -- though a BC(L) could fit one)

Still I'd assumed any tow would have the towed ship directly astern of the towing one; where sails wouldn't be an issue.

If only for my own convenience, the thread I brought forth is where I obtained the info about the range of the forts from the WH. At ~ 500,000 km range, I just can't swallow the pill prescribed for suspending disbelief that at that range a fort's energy weapons are not affected by ships within very dense gravitic fields. "Shut up and take the pill," Thinksmarkedly? I will take it, but I will spit it out when you're not looking.

Also, I envisioned this tactic being carried out on a completely unsuspecting MBS, say from Trevor's Star. Please don't inundate me with requests for particulars on how that would be successful. Ask the MAN with access to nanites and a totally benign use of compulsion intended to AUTHORIZE instead of KILL.

But a surprise mass transit should solve some of the problems. Especially a mass transit blaring the proper transit codes. In such a scenario, I can't see how missiles would come into play. How long would it take for missiles to arrive at their standoff range; even if I crush the huge pill and swallow it so that I can suspend belief that the standoff range of energy weapons are not affected by the intense gravity. Especially energy weapons firing from the sides of the junctions which are perpendicular to the cones of gravity. Gravity should be the most powerful and destructive perpendicular to the cone of gravity. Nobody would argue that energy weapons cannot be fired into a WH. And nobody would argue that ships that are not on the correct bearing cannot enter the WH, sails or no. The correct bearing is the most important, IMO. And entering a WH perpendicular to the lanes should be the most destructive. Same goes for standoff range. Anyway, I will take the pill. But I won't swallow it.

Are we sure that an LD needs sails simply to be in the transit lane or emergence lane? An LD might not need sails after it exits the WH and is in the emergence lane. That might simply be a shortcoming of wedges. A spider drive might function in the emergence lane just fine, where sails are only needed for the actual transit. If correct, an LD can immediately bring up its spider drive and initiate evasive maneuvers.

penny wrote:If only for my own convenience, the thread I brought forth is where I obtained the info about the range of the forts from the WH. At ~ 500,000 km range, I just can't swallow the pill prescribed for suspending disbelief that at that range a fort's energy weapons are not affected by ships within very dense gravitic fields. "Shut up and take the pill," Thinksmarkedly? I will take it, but I will spit it out when you're not looking.

Also, I envisioned this tactic being carried out on a completely unsuspecting MBS, say from Trevor's Star. Please don't inundate me with requests for particulars on how that would be successful. Ask the MAN with access to nanites and a totally benign use of compulsion intended to AUTHORIZE instead of KILL.

But a surprise mass transit should solve some of the problems. Especially a mass transit blaring the proper transit codes. In such a scenario, I can't see how missiles would come into play. How long would it take for missiles to arrive at their standoff range; even if I crush the huge pill and swallow it so that I can suspend belief that the standoff range of energy weapons are not affected by the intense gravity. Especially energy weapons firing from the sides of the junctions which are perpendicular to the cones of gravity. Gravity should be the most powerful and destructive perpendicular to the cone of gravity. Nobody would argue that energy weapons cannot be fired into a WH. And nobody would argue that ships that are not on the correct bearing cannot enter the WH, sails or no. The correct bearing is the most important, IMO. And entering a WH perpendicular to the lanes should be the most destructive. Same goes for standoff range. Anyway, I will take the pill. But I won't swallow it.

Are we sure that an LD needs sails simply to be in the transit lane or emergence lane? An LD might not need sails after it exits the WH and is in the emergence lane. That might simply be a shortcoming of wedges. A spider drive might function in the emergence lane just fine, where sails are only needed for the actual transit. If correct, an LD can immediately bring up its spider drive and initiate evasive maneuvers.

We're not sure about anything of how the LD manages wormholes or grav waves. Despite RFC comment we don't even know 100% that they can (wasn't the comment something along the lines of "what makes you think they can't?")

So maybe they don't need a sail at all -- we just do not know.

A normal ship, however, definitely needs a sail in the emergence lane - as that lane is basically defined as the area near the wormhole where its gravity would destroy a wedge.

Witness Fearless creeping up to the Junction in OBS. It was moving so slowly that after the foresail was rigged and starting to draw power it still had "a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way" before the aft impellers would have had very bad thing happen if they weren't also converted from wedge to sail. After both sails were raised she accelerated down the departure lane until she reached the wormhole itself and transitioned to Basilisk (whereupon, while not described, she presumably reversed the procedure - using sail to accelerate clear and then folding the sails down into an impeller wedge once out the end of the emergence lane)


As for missile flight times; it's implied that the forts might be within 500,000 km as they're worried about return energy fire despite their bubble sidewall. From that piddling range any missiles they launch would cover that in 33 seconds; missiles fired from the more distant forts, say up to 1.5 million km would take 56 seconds to cover that distance. So even distant forts can take hostile ships under fire with laserheads before they clear the emergence lane if ThinksMarkedly is right about how long it takes to clear the Junction's lanes even at unsafe acceleration rates.