Non-CLAC hyper-help for LAC's

JeffEngel wrote:The spider drive detection issue is likely to get helped sooner or later, and isn't an issue in case the quarry is an impeller drive ship. The independent hyper one - yeah, that's likely to remain. All right, that settles that to my satisfaction at least. Thanks!

I do wonder about that whole spider drive detection thing.

I mean, sure, there's going to be a point where a spider drive in operation will be detectable, but let's not forget that spider ships on an oyster bay-style infiltration run have a few advantages. Namely, they will have a pretty good idea about the response times for any scouting forces coming from their target, and so they're able to shut down their drives and go ballistic long before the scouts make their downward translation (not to mention that they have several hours in which to build a vector on whatever heading they choose). The challenge then isn't so much "Can we detect the drives?", but more "Can we detect something that is doing whatever it can to imitate empty space?", which is an even harder problem than finding spider drives.

The E wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:The spider drive detection issue is likely to get helped sooner or later, and isn't an issue in case the quarry is an impeller drive ship. The independent hyper one - yeah, that's likely to remain. All right, that settles that to my satisfaction at least. Thanks!

I do wonder about that whole spider drive detection thing.

I mean, sure, there's going to be a point where a spider drive in operation will be detectable, but let's not forget that spider ships on an oyster bay-style infiltration run have a few advantages. Namely, they will have a pretty good idea about the response times for any scouting forces coming from their target, and so they're able to shut down their drives and go ballistic long before the scouts make their downward translation (not to mention that they have several hours in which to build a vector on whatever heading they choose). The challenge then isn't so much "Can we detect the drives?", but more "Can we detect something that is doing whatever it can to imitate empty space?", which is an even harder problem than finding spider drives.

Yeah. So there's spider drive detection; detecting something gone ballistic (or somehow surprisingly getting there before it goes ballistic); and detecting it despite more-or-less conventional extremely good stealth systems.

The latter two problems are at least ones that the GA is well aware of, and can pursue as incremental advances on existing techniques. But they are fierce, fierce problems in any case. I think the combination of Shannon Foraker's ability to squeeze unconventional capabilities out of conventional technology and Sonja Hemphill's ability to spring new technologies out of existing ones is going to show the most promise specifically handling detection of OB-style attacks.

Good idea would be designing ships similar to coastal guard boats, fast as hell and very good sensors, but not so great armament. If I recall correctly Mesan ships are vulnerable to any kind of weapon. So we can take for example DN, add much better sensors, better compensators, shave as much weight as possible and add a lot of RD. For armament I would leave only chase unchanged and for broadside I would give it battle cruiser type armament and armor. We don't need that, we only need that space for drones and sensors.

Mesan ships aren't vulnerable to any kind of weapon; they simply don't have wedges/sidewalls under stealth. OTOH, they don't have the mass limits of other ships either. The heaviest Mesan ships could well be fortresses - big ones.

Draken wrote:Good idea would be designing ships similar to coastal guard boats, fast as hell and very good sensors, but not so great armament. If I recall correctly Mesan ships are vulnerable to any kind of weapon. So we can take for example DN, add much better sensors, better compensators, shave as much weight as possible and add a lot of RD. For armament I would leave only chase unchanged and for broadside I would give it battle cruiser type armament and armor. We don't need that, we only need that space for drones and sensors.

The RMN at least does not go for a specialist ship whenever it can get away with doing the job with a standard unit.

For speed in terms of acceleration, smaller is generally better. For speed in terms of hypergenerator cycle time, smaller is also better. In neither case is it hugely variable, so we could pretty well let other considerations carry the day as far as they go. Maximum speed is more or less fixed by military versus civilian particle shielding.

For something meant to go take a look at who knows what, putting a capital ship hull and crew out there without capital ship defenses - including something like a capital ship's ability to punch the lights out of whatever is threatening it - just is not going to fly.

For this sort of mission, I could certainly see a typical DD or CL getting a little work in the boat bay to get more recon drones in at the expense of the cutters (or pinnace, in the case of any ship for it large enough to have any). And they may well install another console or two somewhere in CIC or the auxiliary bridge for drone monitoring and control.

For all we know, since Oyster Bay, a bunch of RMN smaller ships may have had that done already. (These at least are not large yard jobs.)

Another approach may be poking around a freighter a bit - ideally, one with the semi-military specs of the first war fleet train - so it can carry and deploy a bunch of recon drones, and have it bop out with a DD squadron to spew them all over. The DD squadron would be there at least for protection of it - it's going to be too tubby and delicate to make running away an acceptable defense for the planners.

Ok, so you need a hyper-capable ship to get out to where the footprint was really quick, can jump around if nessisary to concentrate you forces if yu pick up something on sensors.

It also needs to carry weapons effective enough and long ranged enough to signifcantly damage or destroy what it finds. Idealy destroy but if you can either smash it enough so it can't hyper out (since both of you are outside the system hyper-limit) or cause it to abandon its mission and leave and you are still getting the job done. It also needs to be both able to linger on its search mission, have good sensors and be able to get back home to resupply and get ready for its next mission from a serious distance away- which means hyper-capable

Humm, hyper-capable, LAC on steroids with serious teeth and really really fast in normal space. Sounds like something the Royal Torch Navy is using to good effect. Mr. Hauppman has the design:)

So your plan is to determine when a spider has shown up by when your toy ship is never heard from again? Because while you have to get VERY, VERY close to see the spider, the spider will track you from the moment you cross the alpha wall. And if you seem to getting close to actually spotting it you are already deep inside graser range....

kzt wrote:So your plan is to determine when a spider has shown up by when your toy ship is never heard from again? Because while you have to get VERY, VERY close to see the spider, the spider will track you from the moment you cross the alpha wall. And if you seem to getting close to actually spotting it you are already deep inside graser range....

We call that "Plan B". We're not really thrilled about Plan B, you see....

"Plan A" would be to go out there and spew recon drones and let them get very, very close. If one of them gets killed, well, none of us liked that drone much anyway. Any of the ships in any responsible Plan A is doing all it can to let the recon drone (preferably the specially unloved one) locate the visitor The Hard Way. "Toy ship" is relative.

Plan B is something that someone, far from the actual job, may unfortunately have to view as better than Plan C, which involves finding out that the visitor has been in the system some months later when bits of shipyard fall on Landing. No one around here likes Plan C.

1) Alignment freighter drops in far out system.

2) Alignment freighter drops several hundred very stealthy, very fast grazer torpedoes that aren't actually torpedoes but enhanced endurance surveillance drones, then jumps out.

3) You aren't catching those drones with ships as they're too stealthy and too fast. You might catch them with drones but turns out they got a PDLC cluster to kill drones that get in detection range. Whoops!

4) The spider-drones' job is to hide and move around the system, scouting defenses and occasionally mimicking the signal of a translating spider-ship.


5) You don't know how many spiders were dropped so you can never be certain you got them all. All future signals of your long-range detection arrays will be suspect; you either have to check all of them, all the time (good luck) or miss the genuine invasion that will come in the future.


6) Things are not helped by the genuine spider-scouts that pop in every so often to update the spider-torpedoes' orders and take in their sensor feeds back to the main fleet.