Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

penny wrote:
I was under the impression that missiles are "locked onto the target" from the moment of fire, and they have to be led all the way to the target. Remember, missiles have very myopic sensors.

Ah, but at least RMN has Apollo, and Apollo missiles can be updated from at least the ship that fired them via FTL and so be vectored into the target.

Sure, a Ghost Rider that spots something (and reports it with various range, bearing and vectors) could be picked off by some as yet undisclosed Alignment weapons fired by a LD or other Spider ship...but....if those weapons are not already close enough fire something like a GT Graser (which will show up on RMN tracking relative to the GR's position) then there is going to have to be a wee involved-----which will literally draw a line from the point of ignition to where it hits the GR.

Also sure, the Spider drive ship could have been LIBERALLY seeding impeller based weapons along it's trail as it works on sneaking away, but, again, even if they were mass-driver launched or just gas pressure out a tube, where they start from and where they go gives a relative volume of space for where the controlling ship was.

Do we now have non-impeller powered flight DD or MDM weapons in the Alignment quiver?

Only time will tell. But at this point, unless an LD has essentially been spreading minefields of spider drive weapons or missile pods, it is most likely outside of the range of the Alignment weapons we know about to engage even a destroyer.
Just exactly what are the defensive weapons of a LD or a Ghost other than highly effective stealth and a drive system that is extremely difficult to detect? Spider missiles? What would the range be and what is their acceleration rates? Exactly how would said missiles get ANY interception data from the mother ship without the communication show up the source of the data....particularly since the Alignment does not yet have good FTL? Are LDs dependent on auto cannon as point defense, because when they start lighting off longer range point-defense energy weapons they are going to light themselves up like a Catherine Wheel.

OK, there must be something we have not been told (and no Alignment person has mused about it in the books) but your Spiders seem to have to move at acceleration limited to compensators that don't depend on an impeller wedge to work so the speed is....less than optimal to run anywhere quickly.

I wait with great anticipation for new information.

Brigade XO wrote:OK, there must be something we have not been told (and no Alignment person has mused about it in the books) but your Spiders seem to have to move at acceleration limited to compensators that don't depend on an impeller wedge to work so the speed is....less than optimal to run anywhere quickly.

I wait with great anticipation for new information.

Actually we were told about that, from Mission of Honor:

Chapter 28 wrote:And in that respect, even the spider drive's lower theoretical maximum acceleration presented a definite challenge, given the fact that it produced no impeller wedge. Without a wedge, it also produced no convenient "sump" for an inertial compensator, and that meant the maximum survivable normal-space acceleration for a spider drive-equipped ship was limited by the ability of currently available grav plate technology to offset the consequences of acceleration. Unfortunately, grav plates were far less capable in that respect than inertial compensators, which had an inevitable effect on the maximum accleration a spider-drive ship could attain.

--- skip ---

Although the Alignment's physicists had been inspired to push grav plate technology harder than anyone else, there were still limits. Up to an actual acceleration of one hundred and fifty gravities, it could achieve an efficiency of over ninety-nine percent, producing a "felt" acceleration of only one gravity. Above that level, however, the plates' efficiency fell off dramatically.

Brigade XO wrote:
Just exactly what are the defensive weapons of a LD or a Ghost other than highly effective stealth and a drive system that is extremely difficult to detect? Spider missiles? What would the range be and what is their acceleration rates? Exactly how would said missiles get ANY interception data from the mother ship without the communication show up the source of the data....particularly since the Alignment does not yet have good FTL? Are LDs dependent on auto cannon as point defense, because when they start lighting off longer range point-defense energy weapons they are going to light themselves up like a Catherine Wheel.

OK, there must be something we have not been told (and no Alignment person has mused about it in the books) but your Spiders seem to have to move at acceleration limited to compensators that don't depend on an impeller wedge to work so the speed is....less than optimal to run anywhere quickly.

I wait with great anticipation for new information.

I don't think we got any information on the defenses of an LD or Shark. And we only got vague statements for the Ghosts -- specifically "their antimissile defenses represented little more than a token gesture" [MoH]

But whether that token gesture is just some PDLCs, or includes a CM tube or three, or even contains some new defensive weapons, we just don't know.

The books have been quite sparing with details on the offensive or defensive capabilities of the spider ships.
* We know the Ghosts don't have any offensive weapons (same paragraph of MoH); but can deploy platforms able to communicate final targeting information to torpedoes and missile pods (or at least they emplaced such platforms as part of OB -- though no word on whether the platforms themselves had any sensors or simply were a way to let the Ghosts get well clear of the transmission the information the Ghost-class scout ships had gathered)
* We know the Sharks could care a few gtorps externally and were pod layers (equipped with Cataphracts for OB)
* We know the LD has magazines and internal launch tubes for gtorps. (I think we all assume the LDs will also be pod layers; but I can't find anything in the books explicitly saying so)

But I think that's it; the sum total.

tlb wrote:Actually we were told about that, from Mission of Honor:

Chapter 28 wrote:And in that respect, even the spider drive's lower theoretical maximum acceleration presented a definite challenge, given the fact that it produced no impeller wedge. Without a wedge, it also produced no convenient "sump" for an inertial compensator, and that meant the maximum survivable normal-space acceleration for a spider drive-equipped ship was limited by the ability of currently available grav plate technology to offset the consequences of acceleration. Unfortunately, grav plates were far less capable in that respect than inertial compensators, which had an inevitable effect on the maximum accleration a spider-drive ship could attain.

--- skip ---

Although the Alignment's physicists had been inspired to push grav plate technology harder than anyone else, there were still limits. Up to an actual acceleration of one hundred and fifty gravities, it could achieve an efficiency of over ninety-nine percent, producing a "felt" acceleration of only one gravity. Above that level, however, the plates' efficiency fell off dramatically.

Yeah, depending on application we seem to have two different limits on spider drive acceleration.

For smaller devices, like practical weapons, we're told there isn't enough room to install enough emitters for more than a few hundred gravities. So clearly adding more emitters increases acceleration.

On the other hand, for anything large enough to mount sufficient emitters for more acceleration you run into issues dealing with said acceleration's affects on the internal items and personnel. For the later that's where your quoted 150g normal accel comes in; and slightly further down that same page it goes on to say 200g normal combat max, and 310g maximum, brief, emergency acceleration. (And that emergency accel mentions that's not only the crew limit, 9g experienced, but that's what the ships structure was designed for)


In theory it seems like an uncrewed vessel the size of a ship might be built strong enough, and with acceleration rated components, to allow higher accelerations. But we don't know how much quicker accelerating it'd be practical to make it.
We don't know how much each emitter adds to the acceleration, whether that's linear or sub-linear (logarithmic?), or even how many emitters you can fit on a given size of hull. Nor do we know if there's some limit on the maximum possible spider acceleration no matter how many emitters you throw at the problem.

penny wrote:I was under the impression that missiles are "locked onto the target" from the moment of fire, and they have to be led all the way to the target. Remember, missiles have very myopic sensors.

They do. That's why accuracy sucked at 65 million km for both the RMN and the RHN before Apollo. One could fire at the extreme end of the 9-minute endurance flight, but they had to fire a lot of missiles to get them to actually hit something. This was hand-waving from the author, but is one of the ground rules. We have to accept it.

Except when he told us that the technological problem was overcome. Apollo accuracy was very good at 75 million km during the Battle of Manticore - that's how Honor won. She said that she bluffed against Tourville when the range doubled... but then we saw the Apollo missiles being accurate at 200 million km with at both the Battles of Beowulf (Operation Fabius) and Galton.

So Apollo can find a loosely-defined target.

I'm not saying it will be easy. The Apollo missiles aren't designed to find a wedgeless target, but given sufficiently many of them, they will find something. See more below.

I do not think you are aware of the task at hand. The RD is in constant communication with the ship, true. But you use the word “locate” without qualification. Do consider that there is a large chasm in-between "locating" and "locking" the target up. The RD has likely simply gotten a sniff of something in some somewhat general vicinity. I doubt an RD can give concrete coordinates. Unless it damn near crashed into it. Even then, I doubt an RD can maintain contact with the bogey.

I don't doubt it can maintain contact, so long as it isn't flying past at a high relative velocity and is unable to change direction in time. The high-speed drones launched at the beginning of an engagement will not be able to keep pace with a stealthed ship they've crossed at a quarter-light speed.

But the second or third waves of drones will come at a much lower velocity. Those will have been informed of a ghost in the sensor by the first wave and will try to find it. If they do get a sniff, they can and will keep pace. Drones can accelerate anywhere from 5000 to 30,000 gravities, which is more than enough to keep pace with any ship. They are themselves very stealthy and could get within 150,000 km without being themselves detected.

The RD can relay general directions to the fleet, but missiles have to be led all the way in, and their sensors are very myopic. An LD will not simply sit there; it will execute emergency defensive maneuver “Dodge” as in Get Out Of. You can flood the “general vicinity.” But after several ineffective massive salvos, Honor will abandon the tactic as fruitless and wasteful. Which means abandoning the launches. Just as she did at Solon.

Of course the LD will be doing random course changes, like every ship should be doing.

Will it be doing an escape manoeuvre? That implies it knows it's been detected by the drone in the first place. If it was one of those high-speed fly-bys, it's highly unlikely the spider ship will have detected the RD in the first place, so it won't know to do an escape manoeuvre. If it's one of the slow ones, then there's no escape manoeuvre that could shake the drone.

Moreover, an escape manoeuvre might not be stealthy, so the LD wouldn't want to go above the 150-gravity stealthy envelope. It definitely would make the crew unable to fight their ship, so they wouldn't do that unless they really, really needed to.

Don’t even get me started on heat sources. Simply put, waste heat does not seem to be a problem in the HV other than in a passing reference. What’s good for GA drones is good for the MAN. Waste heat is not going to be the weak link in the MAN’s flagship spider-drive warship and flagship tech. Not gonna happen.

True again, in general, for the Honorverse...

... except where the author specifically told us is a problem. And he did so for the case of a spider ship's stealth.

He may forget about this detail when writing the next books, but as it stands, that is a vulnerability in the MAlign stealth technology.

The most likely counter is to orient it up or down the ecliptic, because most battles are fought on that plane. At large enough scales (light-minutes), battles are 2D problems. Sending drones in a 3D envelope means using more of them or having more space between drones, so unless the GF clues in that it needs to, it may not occur to them that they should.

What I predict will happen is that the first waste heat detection will be accidental.

Agreed. Flaming datum says “something.” But that “something” is going to be even more cryptic than what an RD can manage to send after it gets a “sniff” of something. Akin, this time, to when the mother grabs the young child by the shoulders and spins her towards the pinyatta. Even while facing the pinyatta head on, the kid is still blindfiring the bat.

The metaphor is not very accurate.

How can it be cryptic? Something destroyed a drone, so something there mounts a weapon and isn't showing on the current scans. Send more RDs to the general location of where it was, starting with the RDs that are already not too far from it.

Two flaming data form a velocity vector, making the third detection even more likely.

Your logic lost me here. Of course an LD can be hurt by an RD. (Well.*) But I doubt an LD is going to sit idly by in its path either. Unless we are going to argue again whether an LD can detect RDs.

I think we'll find out that if the LD can see the RD, the RD has already seen the LD. The MAlign said it couldn't find a Shark at 300,000 km distance, even knowing it was somewhere there. But we are routinely told that RDs come to within 100,000 km of an enemy without their cluing in something was there. One of those was Galton, which was nearly the best scanning equipment that the MAlign had (I'm granting that Darius may have withheld some of the latest innovation that could find its own stealth ships, but not by much - that's not one of the things Gail told us that she wasn't allowed to use in her planning).

Therefore, the LD won't be needing to make any evasive manoeuvres. It won't know the RD is there in the first place if the RD doesn't want to be seen (except if it happens entirely by accident, but in that case there's either no time to evade or the RD wasn't trying to ram). If the RD is instead trying to ram, there's no evasion possible because drones are faster than any ship. Moreover, if the RD is trying to ram, it means the fleet ordered it to do so, meaning it has already transmitted a lot of information back to the motherships' CICs.

*As I have said countless times before. I do not think an LD is going to be that much of an eggshell. It has some very powerful oversized tractors that can breach n-space. I don't think an RD can survive a certain area covered by the tractor beams.

I agree it cannot be such an eggshell, but we don't know the means by which it won't be. As described, it is.

The tractors should be irrelevant to the RD's wedge. Nothing can penetrate a wedge, except a more powerful wedge. So the LD's only defence against a ramming RD is to fire a wedge-based CM at it. Unless RFC changes the rules here... and while I don't think that's where he intends to go, he might be forced to do so to close the loophole of ramming RDs.

And, unlike all of you. I wouldn't be surprised if an RD, at least in some instances, is destroyed by running into the intense area of gravity produced by the LD's tractor beams that are so powerful they rip a hole clean though to the hyperwall, before the RD has a chance to relay any information.

Relaying information is actually irrelevant. Its destruction alone is a flaming datum that causes other RDs to be vectored in to have a look, each one more closely guarded against being themselves destroyed. See also above that a sequence of destructions forms a series of velocity vectors, which help find the ship in question.

Also, don't forget that the destruction begin an energetic event that will illuminate the region where it happens. If that happens within 1 km of the ship, debris might also impact on the hull, which compromises the hull. Though there's no way that any crew that wasn't completely asleep would let an active hostile wedge get to within 1000 km of their ship - a range which an RD's wedge is definitely going to be visible.

The MAN would need to come up with a weapon that manages to instantly disable the RD and is low-power and directional enough not to be seen by other RDs flying around. Even then, the sudden shut down of an RD is also a flaming datum... just not a very energetic one.

Then communication is lost. Running into a tractor beam’s intense fields of distortion might be as disastrous as running into the hyperwall without sails. LOL

And possibly equally as bright.

ThinksMarkedly wrote: Drones can accelerate anywhere from 5000 to 30,000 gravities, which is more than enough to keep pace with any ship. They are themselves very stealthy and could get within 150,000 km without being themselves detected.

Do you happen to recall where you saw the 30,000g accel? The fastest I recalled seeing for Ghost Rider drones was 10,000g (~22% the acel of a missile; where-as if they can put that 30 they'd be ~65% the accel of a missile!)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The tractors should be irrelevant to the RD's wedge. Nothing can penetrate a wedge, except a more powerful wedge. So the LD's only defence against a ramming RD is to fire a wedge-based CM at it. Unless RFC changes the rules here... and while I don't think that's where he intends to go, he might be forced to do so to close the loophole of ramming RDs.

RDs do seem like in some ways they'd be more capable of a wedge ramming attack than any kind of normal missile.

The normal missiles can't vary their acceleration - so they're going to be accelerating, hard, in whatever direction they face. Which is an issue, since we have to assume the LD will carry a goodly number of PDLCs and those are very likely to kill an incoming missile before its wedge can make contact -- if they're given a down-the-throat shot at it. But if a missile pitched to try to interpose its wedge it's now heading off-target from the LD at 46,000g. So it would be somewhat tricky to plot an intercept course that kept it its nose from every pointing too close to the LD, yet still rammed its wedge into it. (Forcing the LD to use something other than a PDLC, likely the CM you mentioned, to kill it)

However an RD can adjust its acceleration. So not only is it much harder for the LD to see coming, but once it's vectored towards the LD it can cut its accel to zero (or near-zero) and pitch so its wedge is interposed; rending it immune from hull mounted energy weapons. At that point, as you said, pretty much all the LD could do is reconfirm its location by launching a CM to get the wedge-to-wedge kill.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The tractors should be irrelevant to the RD's wedge. Nothing can penetrate a wedge, except a more powerful wedge. So the LD's only defence against a ramming RD is to fire a wedge-based CM at it. Unless RFC changes the rules here... and while I don't think that's where he intends to go, he might be forced to do so to close the loophole of ramming RDs.

Jonathan_S wrote:RDs do seem like in some ways they'd be more capable of a wedge ramming attack than any kind of normal missile.

The normal missiles can't vary their acceleration - so they're going to be accelerating, hard, in whatever direction they face. Which is an issue, since we have to assume the LD will carry a goodly number of PDLCs and those are very likely to kill an incoming missile before its wedge can make contact -- if they're given a down-the-throat shot at it. But if a missile pitched to try to interpose its wedge it's now heading off-target from the LD at 46,000g. So it would be somewhat tricky to plot an intercept course that kept it its nose from every pointing too close to the LD, yet still rammed its wedge into it. (Forcing the LD to use something other than a PDLC, likely the CM you mentioned, to kill it)

However an RD can adjust its acceleration. So not only is it much harder for the LD to see coming, but once it's vectored towards the LD it can cut its accel to zero (or near-zero) and pitch so its wedge is interposed; rending it immune from hull mounted energy weapons. At that point, as you said, pretty much all the LD could do is reconfirm its location by launching a CM to get the wedge-to-wedge kill.

In Uncompromising Honor (page 259 of the hardback) two drones took out a missile collier each, which were part of the SLN force planning to attack the Hypatia System: SLNS Merchant Mart and SLNS Troubadour, which had their wedges down to unload.

ThinksMarkedly wrote: Drones can accelerate anywhere from 5000 to 30,000 gravities, which is more than enough to keep pace with any ship. They are themselves very stealthy and could get within 150,000 km without being themselves detected.

Jonathan_S wrote:Do you happen to recall where you saw the 30,000g accel? The fastest I recalled seeing for Ghost Rider drones was 10,000g (~22% the acel of a missile; where-as if they can put that 30 they'd be ~65% the accel of a missile!)

No. I don't have firm numbers there. I was hedging my bets on what the acceleration numbers we've calculated in the forum were.

The normal missiles can't vary their acceleration - so they're going to be accelerating, hard, in whatever direction they face. Which is an issue, since we have to assume the LD will carry a goodly number of PDLCs and those are very likely to kill an incoming missile before its wedge can make contact -- if they're given a down-the-throat shot at it. But if a missile pitched to try to interpose its wedge it's now heading off-target from the LD at 46,000g. So it would be somewhat tricky to plot an intercept course that kept it its nose from every pointing too close to the LD, yet still rammed its wedge into it. (Forcing the LD to use something other than a PDLC, likely the CM you mentioned, to kill it)

It's even worse. Missiles are said to be myopic, so if they had to take their eyes off target, they might lose it.

However an RD can adjust its acceleration. So not only is it much harder for the LD to see coming, but once it's vectored towards the LD it can cut its accel to zero (or near-zero) and pitch so its wedge is interposed; rending it immune from hull mounted energy weapons. At that point, as you said, pretty much all the LD could do is reconfirm its location by launching a CM to get the wedge-to-wedge kill.

That's what I was thinking. Oh, it gets better: the RD could survive this encounter! I'm sure there's going to be a mass limit the wedge can absorb without crashing, otherwise you could use a small wedge to drill a hole through an asteroid.

I'm interested in learning how RFC will deal with this loophole, aside from not having the opportunity present itself.

Jonathan_S wrote:
On the other hand, for anything large enough to mount sufficient emitters for more acceleration you run into issues dealing with said acceleration's affects on the internal items and personnel. For the later that's where your quoted 150g normal accel comes in; and slightly further down that same page it goes on to say 200g normal combat max, and 310g maximum, brief, emergency acceleration. (And that emergency accel mentions that's not only the crew limit, 9g experienced, but that's what the ships structure was designed for)


In theory it seems like an uncrewed vessel the size of a ship might be built strong enough, and with acceleration rated components, to allow higher accelerations. But we don't know how much quicker accelerating it'd be practical to make it.
We don't know how much each emitter adds to the acceleration, whether that's linear or sub-linear (logarithmic?), or even how many emitters you can fit on a given size of hull. Nor do we know if there's some limit on the maximum possible spider acceleration no matter how many emitters you throw at the problem.

I believe there was a quote, that the longer the spider ship, the higher the accel possible (it makes more sense, more "legs" equals more power) So while the drive on a SDD (Super Duper Dreadnaught, again borrowing from the moniker shed) may have more capability for accel, it will always be limited by the limits of the water based occupants. Conversely, it means that a small spider ship, like a Graser Torpedo or a Ghost scout frigate may have less accel than an LD, because their drive isn't powerful enough to reach the human's max acceptable forces. OR not - we don't know where that balance sweet spot is.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote: Drones can accelerate anywhere from 5000 to 30,000 gravities, which is more than enough to keep pace with any ship. They are themselves very stealthy and could get within 150,000 km without being themselves detected.

Do you happen to recall where you saw the 30,000g accel? The fastest I recalled seeing for Ghost Rider drones was 10,000g (~22% the acel of a missile; where-as if they can put that 30 they'd be ~65% the accel of a missile!)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The tractors should be irrelevant to the RD's wedge. Nothing can penetrate a wedge, except a more powerful wedge. So the LD's only defence against a ramming RD is to fire a wedge-based CM at it. Unless RFC changes the rules here... and while I don't think that's where he intends to go, he might be forced to do so to close the loophole of ramming RDs.

RDs do seem like in some ways they'd be more capable of a wedge ramming attack than any kind of normal missile.

The normal missiles can't vary their acceleration - so they're going to be accelerating, hard, in whatever direction they face. Which is an issue, since we have to assume the LD will carry a goodly number of PDLCs and those are very likely to kill an incoming missile before its wedge can make contact -- if they're given a down-the-throat shot at it. But if a missile pitched to try to interpose its wedge it's now heading off-target from the LD at 46,000g. So it would be somewhat tricky to plot an intercept course that kept it its nose from every pointing too close to the LD, yet still rammed its wedge into it. (Forcing the LD to use something other than a PDLC, likely the CM you mentioned, to kill it)

However an RD can adjust its acceleration. So not only is it much harder for the LD to see coming, but once it's vectored towards the LD it can cut its accel to zero (or near-zero) and pitch so its wedge is interposed; rending it immune from hull mounted energy weapons. At that point, as you said, pretty much all the LD could do is reconfirm its location by launching a CM to get the wedge-to-wedge kill.

An RD can also turn down or off it's wedge, making it an almost invisible target, then giving it the ability to sneak up on a target. And of course there is Missile Toe - An RD with a heavy Laserhead in it - get within laser head range then... bam.